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Thread: A not so common wish list for the next total war UPDATED 23-10-2014

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    Icon3 A not so common wish list for the next total war UPDATED 23-10-2014

    Ladies and gentleman, without further due, I present you, the wall of doom. I dare you to read it:

    Hi to everyone that takes the time to read this, I thank you in advance for the reading and also for any possibly input on this subject as long is constructive.

    It has come to my attention how is that many post/wishes invariably goes for the more "realism" subject, but at the same time they want more "variety", while keeping it as historical accurate as possible. Some of the following ideas could have some effect on that and I think they strike the best balance between them.

    While I know beforehand that more of the things mentioned are far beyond of what could happen, but if you, my dear reader comes with a open mind and in a strike of luck any CA employee see this then I can hope some of the ideas exposed here could be at least considered, other things I consider basic and vital to the survival of the franchise and should be addressed and resolved even after launching any new game.


    Resume
    This is for the people that have no time to read all the painful wall-o-text that is made up of all the descriptions. However, to better grasp the meaning of most points/suggestions, reading the whole explanation bellow is required.
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

    AI:
    - In general, make the AI more open to the end players. More modable AI will result on the fan base making the perfect one for you with 0 costs for CA.

    Battle AI:
    - BAI behaving according to leading unit experience.
    - No more kamikaze generals!

    Campaign AI:
    - A little bit less backstabber CAI.
    - AI with truly defined objectives.

    Battle:

    Battle map:
    - Way bigger battle maps.
    - Make the garrisonable buildings come back.
    - Make the towers and gates garrisonable for the first time. No more auto turrets ala team fortress and supermarket doors.
    - Unique maps for every province castle/city or even better make user customizable maps.
    - Show building on-progress in the battle map. Nothing too fancy, just some half built walls and some construction equipment should suffice to create a even higher quality atmosphere.
    - Wild life is a good addition, now I would like to see some civilians please. DONE in Attila
    - Mixed battles, real shore assaults over coastal towns and cities. DONE in Rome 2
    - Forget about capture the flag: This is not Team Fortress or a Sunday nerf game on the park.
    Battle units:
    - Not everyone being a parkour-ninja master anymore, never again, pretty please?
    - Reflect the unit equipment on the battle map. This way there will be a even higher unit variety, and it will not be just delicious eye candy!
    - Units being able to surrender (both enemy and yours).
    - Been able to capture and use enemy equipment on the battle map and keep it on the campaign map, like ships.
    - Units being able to become truly loose while entering an urban environment, like in the Cossacks franchise.

    Battle mechanics:
    - The higher ground bonus for ranged units. I'm not a physics PHD, but I know that having the higher ground should give the ranged units a little bit more range, like it used to be.
    - Units attacked from behind should turn and engage immediately, not rotate the whole unit.
    - Being able to betray an ally or been betrayed by an ally on the battlefield.
    - Capturing some enemy units that rout and all of those that surrender (if the faction and era context is appropriated) and then ask for a ransom, or even to join you on the battle field.
    - More deployable defenses on battle maps. Even for both sides (attacker and defender).
    - Better stakes, that don't kill your own horses, or better yet an BAI that take them seriously.
    - Being able to assign objectives a la fire & forget to your own and ally troops before and/or during battles. This could help to manage AI allies and larger (than 20 units) armies.DONE in Rome 2
    - Some buildings/walls should be impervious to some attacks. Please tell me I'm not the only one whom legendary walls where destroyed by some ballistae throwing mere javelins at it..
    - Battlements should be properly implemented for archers to take truly advantages from them.
    - Not allowing every missile unit to launch flaming missiles out of the blue. Allow them to use this only when placed on the walls or in the field with some sort of deployable line of bonfires or pedestals or something like that, requiring be near this to enable the firing of flame arrows.
    - Disallow the Molotov magic from most troops!
    - Include the option of having blood in the battlefield on the base game, with a parental password if needed.
    - Implement the option of controlling units via voice commands, having the time of response of the units delayed if the general is far from the unit.

    Campaign

    Campaign Map:
    - A bigger, global map for every game on every era. Rome vs Han, Feudal Japan on America... it should be fun. This is more a rant/petition than actually a suggestion, I know that games should have a limited scope, but you almost made it with Empire!!!
    - Allow renaming objects like towns, units and even armies.

    Campaign mechanics:
    - Optional 2, 4, 6 or 12 turns per year natively supported in the game. This is a pretty elemental one and I'm honestly surprised you haven't implemented something along these lines yet.
    - Having truly civil wars and delegation of power. Cities with governors that auto build, recruit and defend the province if you want/allow them, but that also can rebel and try to coup if left unchecked or you are a lousy ruler.
    - Not having to siege every city to capture a province if certain conditions are accomplished.
    - More organic discover, invention and implementation of technologies. Do away the rigid, predictable and boring tech tree.

    Diplomacy
    - Being able to force peace between two factions.
    - Being able to negotiate with lands.
    - Being able to ask an ally or friendly faction to attack/hold specific objectives/areas on the campaign map.

    Cities and towns
    - Add fully coastal cities.
    - Improved coastal cities, aka ports mechanics, deeper and more meaning full mechanics.
    - Bring back the individual tax levels for every city, while retaining a global bar for a quick adjust of every province at the same time.
    - Allow the moving of the capital.
    - A better application of population mechanics. More close to Rome Total War, but having different kinds of population and that require a balance that affects the civil order, income and troop types availability.
    - Different amounts of wealth should be assigned to every kind of population, in order to allow more differentiation between classes.
    - A combination between the old and the new building system. Where you can build several buildings at the same time, but have not a limit in the max quantity of slots. Instead the labor and resources available to build would the cap on what and how fast one can build things.
    - Cities and buildings requiring labor, in order to really bring the population numbers to the strategic equation.
    - Don't restrict the number of buildings every province could have.
    - Every town/special building in the province can be garrisoned, like they used to be in Empire and Napoleon.
    - Every town/special building in the province can be captured individually.
    - Resuming the last two options In a short sentence, make the special towns/buildings essentially smaller cities, that with enough investment and time can grow on pair of the province capitals.
    - Give me back the chance to look at MY cities THEY ARE MINE! And if you don't want to make individual maps for every province, then give me the chance to customize my cities from the city view (see the unique maps for every province's castle or customizable maps point).

    Army mechanics
    - Simultaneous movement of all the armies at the end of the turn. In this way intercepting and ambushing get a whole new meaning and we will lose some of the advantages over the AI, making the game more fun and challenging.
    - Training in battalions. The units should be trained like this to have more realistic recruitment and army composition.
    - Being able to retrain/re-equip units.
    - Mechanics to convert a unit into another kind once a experience threshold has been reached.
    - Change the max size of armies and its caps. Having the max size of a army depending of the general stats and some logistical "technology tree".
    - Supply system for armies and navies, this could give a whole new immersion level to the strategic map!
    - Re-filling ranks in enemy provinces, as long the army is connected to its supply route.
    - Mercenaries should be recruited with the old mercenary system, and their availability should be influenced by the defeated factions and other factors, like it happened on real life.
    - Weapons and equipment should be treated as finite resources (produced by weapon and armor smiths, bowers, horse breeders, etc) and quantities of them should be needed when and where training of troops occur as well to replenish troops currently deployed.
    - The recruitment of units should affect not only the population numbers but the balance of the types of populations. Implementing the different population mechanics will means that every kind of unit could need different kinds and numbers of population; affecting differently the population balance of the city they are recruited.
    - The difference between the units (professional or not) could be given by military training buildings on the province/city they are recruited, affecting not only theirs stats, but their train cost and time, their upkeep and their look on the battlefield.
    - A levy, or temporal units system, working in conjunction with the point above.
    - Better troop transport representation on the sea. This has been discussed several other times. It was OK right up to Medieval 2, when sea battles where abstract too. From Empire on this is not longer the case, and now that you have bring this awesome sea battles to the series, this issue needs to be tackle with a little bit more serious approach. And no, transformers armies are NOT the way to deal with it, looking at you Rome 2 and Attila.

    Siege mechanics
    - The turns until rendition should be ruled by both the food (as now) and the defenses of the location: The amount of turns until rendition/battle on the campaign map should be measured both by food against the local population and defenses vs. the attacker amount of artillery capable of destroying said defenses as long the besieging armies have supplies (specially in the case of gunpowder units). Whatever counter reach zero first provokes either an assault or a rendition like the turns until rendition/battle do. Also the amount of food left in higher difficulties should be hidden to the attacker, unless it has a spy in the city prior to the siege.

    - When besieging, both sides should take casualties: As no siege with go on without small skirmishes and accidents prior the main assault. Special units for this like the "pavise" equipped could be employed to minimize the casualties on the attacker side.

    Agents and characters
    - A bit different agent mechanics, read the full point on this below because is too large to resume, also I made this point based on a criminal agent like the shinobi of Shogun 2, other more official agents like emissaries should be recruited in regular buildings like they do now.
    - A wide different array of agent management mechanics.
    - Loved-Hated Generals/Agents.

    Moding
    - Make some mod tools! For real! I understand that you may don't release them for the current game right now so you can take advantage of the DLC market, but have them ready and release them as soon you release the next game. That would increase/revive the sales of the former one. And in this way you will be able to draw a clear line in what things are legal or not to mod, while making a lot of fans happy at the same time! DONE in Shogun 2 and improved on Rome 2

    Format of delivery and other stuff
    - The game should have a version that don't need steam or anything like that, just a old serial and good to go. Hell you can ship it with no multiplayer support and price it even higher! I'll buy it over the steam version any day of the week!
    - Include a LAN battle and LAN campaign option. Are you really that much afraid about piracy?! Don't you trust the quality of your games enough?

    DLC policy
    - Please make them more juicy, you could charge higher if they really add new content to the game. Don't waste resources
    and the patience of your players with stupid DLC that only put some textures in... really.


    AI
    I will start with the artificial intelligence of the game. This has brought a lot of conflict in the past and even when individual thoughts do vary to a certain degree, ranging from outright bad, passing from acceptable up to good, the most broad and public accepted consensus is that the AI is bad, or at least is not as good as it should be. So I will elaborate in this issue a little bit.

    The Battle Artificial Intelligence
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    For the battle AI, certain errors like the ones in the sieges, some ineptitude in battle like not flanking and other issues have been pointed out a lot and do are a really pain. They seem to be far beyond a pathfinding issue so unless I'm mistaken and there are not other variables in this matter, they are 100% fault of a flawed battle AI.

    Now I'll grant to CA that making any kind of AI is not piece of cake, even more when the thing it's suppose to command troops, a activity that demands cunning and skills that even not every human posses, so I’ll cut them some slack. However as time goes by its obvious they are reciclying the old CAI and barely making it working for the next title. And to be honest the battle AI needs a lot of improvement or most likely a rework from 0 in order to offer a better challenge and to be able to find its path in any map.

    And taking the opportunity I'm at this issue I will point out one of my wishes:

    - The BAI should behave according to its leading unit: An army with no real general but a captain would behave in more disarray than one with a fully fledged general. A green general might rush the elite/reserve melee troops against you, and so on. I don't know if this has been tried out in the total war series beyond the moral and other stats bonuses granted by the skilled generals to the troop. I know this is a hard one, but it would be awesome if we start to really fear the higher ranked enemy generals, to the point of avoiding then in battle and trying harder to eliminate then trough agents and complots.

    - And it's leading unit should behave as an leading unit: The general should try to be out of harm’s way like 99% of the time, only facing danger if it has a trait like "daring", "blood lust", "likes to leads the charge", "the little corporal" or things like that. This didn't happen to me that much on Shogun 2 unless it was a lone rebel general I tricked into charging... but I still hear about it on some gaming communities.


    The Campaign Artificial Intelligence
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    It seems too prone to backstabbing the player and favor other AI factions. Maybe this is to create more resistance and in turn, increase the difficulty for the player but a little more impartial AI would be better in this department in my opinion, and the game should be made more challenging in other departments instead.

    CAI lost its marbles on Rome 2, no thanks in small amount to broken features like the transport fleets and army "stances". And just as the BAI, it might need a rework from 0.

    -A little bit less backstabbing AI: that's it.

    -AI with defined objectives: I don't know if it's only me, but Total War AI has been always seemed a little off (if not a lot). However it has come to my attention that the strategic AI seems to not have a consolidate objective beyond simply being there and warmonger its way to... victory? In fact, the AI strategic considerations have always been so ****ing random that they seem outright demented, serving only the purpose of being an always chaotic entity there trying to stop you, the player, for achieving victory. I want them to have their own agendas and follow them through other means beside war. And as a plus, it would be nice if their agendas address their neighbors before that little faction across the whole map.

    AFTER Rome 2 I conclude easily that the AI is the weakest link on CA's chain. This need to be fixed, ASAP. However it could be fixed with 0 costs for CA and total gain for everyone. It's easy, simply open up the AI (or most of it) to the public and let moders trickle with it. We know its complex, but if you could manage to do that, as other games have, you could end up with a brilliant strategic and tactical AI in less than a year by the hand of the most dedicated fans and moders, whom, without offense, in some cases could be more qualified and/or able than you to do those things.

    Battles
    This is the feature most people is here for. This is the most used feature of the game. Some people even only play custom battles and online matches without giving to much thinking about the campaign. They also represent the turning points in every campaign, so we can see it’s an important feature. Sega can see this, The Creative Assembly know this, so this is one of the best aspects of the game, however they are far from perfect.

    Battle Maps
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    The battle maps are carefully elaborated and the battle mechanics of the game are in general given proper attention too. However there seems to be some things that did escape their attention or they didn't make for any reasons. This is what I consider they did not put and battle maps should have:

    - Way bigger battle maps: And I mean way bigger, at least 3 or 4 times what we have now. In order to represent properly landmarks, famous cities and have more space to army encampments and field HQ's on the battle map.

    - Garrisonable buildings: They were present in Empire and Napoleon, but absent again in S2TW, even when some buildings like the Tenshu should be. In future releases of TW I will like to see their return.

    - Garrisonable towers and gates: I don't like the idea of towers shooting automatically, only requiring a unit to be near. Neither I love the idea of capturing them as easily as standing at their foot for a while. A permanent garrison of archers/soldiers should be assigned to towers on a castle or city (be it automatically or manually), and the attacker should need to destroy them or at least kill its occupants by assaulting the tower just like any other building. And if the attacker wants to use the towers after capturing them, then it should assign some of his troops to do so. This should work somewhat like the cannons on fortifications of Empire. As for the gates, the attacker should occupy them with some soldiers in order to open (or close) them. The defender should have it more easily by not having to assign any soldier to them at the beginning of the assault, but if during the battle he lost the gates then you can assume the people manning the gates at the start are dead, and to get them back you would need to fight for them and put a garrison with at least a few soldiers to operate it. In both cases once the gates are open or closed you could pull off your soldiers from them.

    - Unique maps for every province's castles and cities or customizable maps: For the campaign at least, since the online and custom battles having relative fewer maps is not so big deal. But for the campaign it kills a lot of the magic to besiege or defend the exact same castle/city on the exact same map in different provinces over and over again, with the only variation being the level on the castle. I would really like to have a different castle map to every province, with its own terrain and castle design, the same for towns. If that's so, then I don't mind if I can or can't customize my castle/town on the battle map, as long they are different enough. Of course some castles would look very similar and that's pretty acceptable (this is even more forgiving when it comes to towns), but having the exact terrain for a lot of different provinces is not appreciated. Otherwise please make the battle maps (at least the town ones) customizable, putting a map editor when you make a zoom in the city ala Rome Total War, and from there order the construction of buildings, in this way one could order the construction from the campaign menu (with the game auto placing the structure) or you can zoom in the city and put the buildings where you want to. This would allow you to put your most beloved/expensive/important building in places where they could be protected better, and in the case of the defenses you could customize them to suit your defensive tactics.

    - Show building on-progress in the battle map: If you are upgrading a building when a battle on it's in mediations start, the battle map should reflect this. An upgrading castle should have incomplete outer walls. This can give a deeper immersion to the battle on relation with the campaign map. This also would make battles with such obstacles fun and interesting. It does not even have to reflect the exact amount of progress on the upgrade.

    - Wild life is a good addition, now I would like to see some civilians please, especially on siege battles, more especially when this means that a city is the scenario! Sometimes I wonder, where's everybody? Why don't they come out to cheer at least? When some building gets hit by artillery, where is the people running out and screaming while the building is catching on fire? I don't mean to have a precise record of everyone in the city, but some random villagers running here, some screams or cheers while troops pass along buildings and other things to make the battle feel even more alive!

    - Mixed battles, aka beach assaults: This are suppose to be really rare, but a naval landing on a beach would be the most awesome battle ever. Can you imagine a battle that, after defeating the enemy navy you start download your troops? And maybe a enemy army would try to defend the port? I do, and it's pretty sweet. Done

    this is pretty much all I have to say about battle maps, other than this they are brilliant and very well programmed. I especially like how now every single mounted troop can dismount! Alas! A shame that's not possible in MTW2, it was however with some units in the original MTW, but only pre-battle. Other thing that I do love is the implementation of wild life on the maps.

    - Forget about capture the flag: This is not Team Fortress or a Sunday nerf game on the park. THIS IS TOTAL WAR! Get rid of it on all battles except perhaps multiplayer for time reasons. I don't want to lose/capture a city by raising a flag. I want to secure the city by submitting every last defender to flee, surrender or death, and I expect the same from my enemies.


    Battle Units
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

    - Not everyone being a parkour-ninja master anymore, never again: I don't like every single unit scaling every wall of every fortress, its historically inaccurate, ruins game play , over simplifies sieges and is outright silly. In this department I'm not very well informed, but I believe not every wall of every castle was scalable and in ancient Japan. It would be more fun(if unhistorical) that just selected units, like ninjas could go up a wall, take out silently the (small?) garrison of a gate and then open it for you. In any case I hope this is just a matter of the period when the current TW is placed, and not the norm from now on, however seeing how in empire they were able to do it I could say that the art of siege has been lost from total war.

    - Units being able to surrender: Both enemy and yours, if unit has really low morale, and there's a chance the enemy would accept surrender; they should be able to do it. Otherwise they should rout/fight till death.

    - Reflect the unit equipment on the battle map: As one upgrade the armor and weapons of a unit in the campaign map, this should be reflected on the map at least slightly. This should happen in every total war game, it did happen on M2, I don't know why they didn't keep the trend. Not only the most experienced and/or better equipped troops will have a tactical and practical advantage, they will be the most "eye candy" valued ones too. For more of this see the spoiler below Really different units? In the Army topic on the Campaign Section below.

    - Being able to capture and use enemy equipment on the battle map: and then keeping said equipment on the campaign map, pretty much like ships are on Empire Total War. This is especially important with stuff like cannons and obviously ships, but also horses and other things.

    - Units being able to become truly loose: Preferably while entering an urban environment or routing, like in the Cossacks franchise. That's it; units stop being in formation and individual soldiers can go anywhere alone or in groups of few or many, but always individually, just as units in classic games like Age of Empires, Starcraft, Cossaks. This way the units can split up without ing the pathfinding upon entering a city. Also you can send small teams of soldiers to block streets or enter buildings and so on. While routing for good the unit could simply loose all cohesion and every soldier go in any direction.


    Battle mechanics
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

    - The higher ground bonus for ranged units: It has come to my attention that the archers and other ranged units in general does not gain a range bonus in high terrain. I would like this back, of course it have not to be a overpowered bonus, just a slightly one would do.

    - Units attacked from behind should turn and engage immediately: The turning could even be made automatically for the unit before receiving the charge, if they are not carrying any other order, like some units auto charge sometimes. Something along the lines of: "Hey Tim do you hear that??! Oh! Guys watch out we have some enemies on our backs, turn around!" and immediately turn around, not the whole unit (making a whole turn where the units in the right go left and vice versa), but each model in the back should simply turn 180 and start fighting.

    - Being able to betray an ally: or been betrayed on the battlefield by an ally, like in the first Medieval Total War. This will give back more tactical options and strategy considerations to the battles, integrating them even further with the campaign in general.

    - Capturing some enemy units that rout and all of those that surrender: if faction and era context is appropriated, and then ask for a ransom, keep them like prisoners, or even to integrate to your faction as slaves, civilians or military units. Also, the surrendering units could be allowed to just leave the battlefield, giving the leading general of the battle more piety and improving a little the diplomatic relations perhaps?

    - More deployable defenses on battle maps: Maybe no only for the defender but also for the besieging and field attacking army? This would be especially sweet when besieging with a roman army, they used to build a inward/outward fortress around the besieged fortress to defend from outside help to the besieged town/fortress and to defend/deny escape in case the besieged try to attacked them.

    - Better stakes : In which your own men don't get killed like jerks, or in which the AI cavalry gets impaled while running even when no one is behind them and have plenty of space wide open on both sides of them. In Medieval 2 this happens a lot. Even when the battle front has moved way from stakes, AI and player cavalry will path straight trough it like if it wasn't there. That needs to be fixed for the next time that defense is implemented. I can understand if you give a direct order to assault a unit covering behind it, but for the rest? The horses should casually pass by the sides of the stakes and avoid them altogether.

    - Being able to assign objectives to your own and ally troops: relative simple and broad objectives specific to the battle, like a group of 3 cavalry units and 5 elite infantry units to assault and take the center of the castle/town/whatever, another group of 4 archers and 3 spear infantry to make harassment on this area, other group to take control and remain in another area, and so on, and the units you don't assign a AI captain/general are the ones you start the battle with as normal... but in any moment you can just select any unit or group of AI controlled units to override their current orders and move them yourself. That will solve a little the trouble of managing huge numbers of units while still retaining full control of the army as has always been. This way everybody happy, and also the option to override orders could be disabled in legendary difficult, or at least make necessary to the units been in the radius of a general. DONE

    - Battlements should be properly implemented: Archers should be able to "shoot at will" while standing behind them, instead of still having to fire in volleys. Also they should be able to fire right trough the holes of the battlements instead of firing in angle (the same goes for crossbows). This could make archers quite deathly to units coming up the ladders like historically and logically they should be.

    - Some buildings/walls should be impervious to some attacks: or better said, to some artillery. I never got how in hell a Ballista, shooting nothing but javelins could bring down a 5 meters thick stone wall. This was one of the things that put me on the track of mods actually. Impaling several soldiers and even horses, yeah, damaging a tower by killing some defenders with a lucky hit entering the windows, why not, but destroying a stone wall, that even cannons (in real life) had troubles with and need weeks to chew, no sir, that's too much to take. I think that some kinds of projectiles should not be able to damage stone walls. Or better yet, stone walls, towers and gates should be susceptible only to certain kind of weaponry.

    - Allow projectile units to use flaming arrows only if they are in the castle walls with fire pedestals (in sieges) or have some fire pedestals of the field: On sieges there should be an upgrade to the walls, or perhaps it should be attached to certain tier up, to have the bonfires (don't know if is the correct term). So only archers near them will be able to fire erhh with fire... In the field, before battle, your archers could deploy them as the current stakes are deployed. And once the battle is started only units near these pedestals could fire flaming arrows. I always disliked how the bow units can put flames on their arrows just with the power of positive thoughts...

    -Along the lines of the past point, deny the magic Molotov abilities to the soldiers: From where they take out the already lighted torches? And I'm not really sure if I wanna know... But it seems a poor way to dumb down the sieges. If you want to make something burn then use the siege equipment or have a few models in the unit carrying some torches all the time, that would make it less weird.

    - Have some guts please!: And I don't mean it as a pejorative phrase. I mean to have effects on the game that show this. I'm not a gore fanatic, but some blood would be nice to get a little more immersion. After all this is a war simulator, in the field we kill thousands upon thousands of men in battle. Also we murder tons of helpless fellas that are just trying to get back home with their families, running from a battle that they might don't even wanted to be in the first place! When we pillage, loot or raze enemy cities, what do you think it happens? That little button (the loot one) its only the virtual representation of the mass rape, murder and slavering of thousands if not millions of people that lived in that city. And despise all this we can't have some blood on the field? And if you are a concerned parent, it could have a parental password option to change it to the way is now, just like tons of games have. Also, don't charge extra for this or put it on a DLC, this needs to be in the game, with parental control if needed, but definitively it's part of the WAR, thus a game called Total War must have it.

    - Implement the option of controlling units via voice commands: akin to End War. But have the time of response of the units lag depending of the proximity of the general. This will also emulate the delay of the orders when the troops were far from the general. Of course this is only a idea, it remains to be seen how practical it could be.


    Campaign
    This is for me the jewel of the crown of every single TW game up today. I love to make strategic decisions, recruit, mobilize and engage enemy troops. However, in my opinion the lack of options and mechanisms that could add more strategy features seems really bad. So here it is:

    Campaign map
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

    - A bigger, global map: I will not criticize the size of the maps because that really depends on the scope of the game. However I do would like to see a global map some day, Empire Total War almost did it, but well, that's only my opinion/taste.

    - Allow renaming objects: like units, towns and even armies now! Like Empire and Napoleon used to! I don't know why you take out this from the game. This is especially helpful if diplomacy allows you to make deals like asking your ally to stall the enemy army X, besiege town Y or kill general Z.

    That's all I can think about it for now, the 3d, beautiful, fully 360° spinning maps are already done!

    All the following points are represented to some or fully extent on the campaign map, but since they don't necessarily affect or change this map I will put them under other categories.

    Campaign mechanics
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

    - Optional 2, 4, 6 or 12 turns per year natively supported in the game: This and the balancing of the income and turns to build and recruit should be natively supported from the game options menu. Is a lot easier for the developer to do this than to moders, and also have the plus to give the player more options without need of moding.

    - Having truly civil wars and delegation of power: By delegation of power I mean like the auto management feature in the recruitment and building like the one we already saw in Total War. But I want it to go even further, and assign a governor (be it a civil or a general) to every province. This governor will be in charge of buildings and recruitment and if allowed, it also will manage the movement of the auto-garrison in behalf of the defense of its province and it's province only (being a nice way to deal with raider forces, you won't have to send your own huge stacks to hunt down a couple of cavalry units). But one must be aware, since letting them run too loose will inflate their egos, and if they aren't honorable men, a real civil war might erupt in your nation/clan/lands/empire. By this I mean that one of your governors acquired much power and it's now seceding from your faction or is trying to take you out of the office as a ruler of the faction. It will be a lot more interesting if some of the other governors would align with you or will rebel too depending on their loyalty and power. Other example of this would be the case of two or more provinces that hate each other(for any reason you can conceive, and on the base of how the faction is ruled) could go to war (exclusively with each other), so you may be presented with a dilemma, interdict the conflict by slapping both governor's hands by pen or sword(reaffirming your position as faction leader), take a side on the conflict (reaffirming your position, but not so much as the first one) or just watch and wait what happens (clear signs of a weak leader maybe?). I know that vassals sound pretty much like this, but I don't mean this lands to be other faction, but one of yours, so if you suspect about a governor you could put him out of office, or put a garrison of your own permanent troops on the city to suppress the local power, having full control of the province, or simply leave the city without governor and manage it like always, but losing the inherent bonus of having a governor.

    - Not having to siege every city to capture a province if certain conditions are meet: I'm the only one thinking that sometimes the region/province/whatever should simply give up once the armies that where protecting them are wiped out? I mean, if morale and what not is low, and "liberation" armies are far away, sometimes you won't be in need of besieging every settlement, but simply win in battle against the resident army and that's about it. Exception would be highly fortified cities and such. This would give a little variety, so instead of always pitting your army towards civilian objectives while the enemy armies are but an obstacle/annoyance you can sometimes center your aim towards military objectives only. You know, you take this and this fort and boom half province is yours, now when the defending army sally out from the remaining fort you ambush them, kill them all and since there’s is no other military in the region, besides a virtually empty fort, kaboom, the region is yours, and you didn't have to siege the fort/city which would have taken a lot of time and gave time to the locals get reinforcements. The overall idea I had is to reduce the repetitive siege, give yet another way to conquer/acquire a province and give some land battles more epic felling and importance!

    - Implement the techs on a more organic and realistic way, do away the rigid and predictable boring tech tree: I tend to feel tech development in the way it is now, using "trees", is too rigid and false. If it depended upon my choice, the tech tree and the X amount of turns to develop X tech will be gone forever, for all games. I think that as in real life, the "tech tree" should be more organic, along the lines of what you do on regular basis. You siege a lot? You get better at it, by let's say accumulating points after each siege (successful or not), once a certain amount of points are reached you get an upgrade regarding siege warfare. And so on. On the other hand building a lot of ports for example could increase your naval tech, as well as naval battles and doing trade by sea.

    Other way of acquiring tech would be by trade. But not in the form of a trading screen for tech. That was never part of a real diplomatic reunion, but by civil commerce. You know those guys over there have really nice agricultural tools, if you open trading with them then your people will eventually buy those tools and eventually start to copy them and produce them by their own.

    And finally by conquest, if you conquer X army, city or nation you can get some or all the techs that this culture had and you don't (that's how Romans rolled anyway). An example as Rome could be that you should get the gladius after fighting against Iberian troops (or anyone that have that sword) for the first time. Other more specific "techs" like the Marian Reform could be combination of your actions and dates or places on the map or better yet, a screen where you can make, activate, deactivate decrees, laws, regulations and ordinances that would affect your gameplay in whole different ways ranging from economic and recruitment up to popularity and whatnot.


    Diplomacy
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

    - Being able to force peace between to factions: As long they both are weaker than you and they knowledge this fact.
    - Being able to negotiate with lands: As long the context is ok.
    - Being able to ask an ally or friendly clan/faction/empire to attack/hold specific objectives/areas/characters/armies/navies: No further explanation needed.


    Cities and towns
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

    -Add coastal cities: or simply putted, allow coastal towns to have more buildings slots and give them a proper battle map.

    -Improved coastal cities aka ports mechanics: should work not only by improving a single series of buildings. I would like to see them have some specialized buildings like warehouses, dry docks and other commerce buildings controlled by you. From there then civilian ships and stores develop independently. This could mean that the lest militaristic a port it's, the more civil commerce it can bear, thus increasing the revenue you get from it, however a sufficiently big city should have a big port too, so it could bare a full commerce and military building trees at the same time. Also some agents associated with trade could be trained and deployed from here, further increasing the importance of the port. For a more detailed description of this see the spoiler, courtesy of my friend Hazabones and a little adjustment I gave to his idea:
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    Quote Originally Posted by Hazbones View Post
    Here is another idea of mine that I think needs some attention: Ports

    I really don't like the fact that a single ship can blockade an entire commercial sized trade port. Really???!!! Block the port with your little 2 gun vessel and all trade through that port ceases. This is ridiculous IMO.

    In real life, if a port is blockaded, they would first try to break the blockade by any means either by their own coastal batteries (of whatever weapon type in that time period) and if that is not possible, they would use anything that floats (improvised torpedos or bombs) to engage the blockading ships or run past them (blockade runners). If the blockade cannot be lifted, the inhabitants of the port would turn to using the huge stockpiles stored away in the port warehouses to at least keep the flow of goods already at the port moving into the economy. A blockaded port just means that ships (in theory) cannot get in or out. We all know this is not always the case. The port function is not totally lost even when there is a disruption of goods coming in.

    As you can see above, there are many things that CA can do with ports to make them more than a spot on the map. USE THEM! I suggest making the port like a city in itself. Allow us to build these structures within a port:

    Trade- these can be usual upgrade options for ports like: fishing docks, trade port, commercial port, etc.
    Storage- (Ice) block houses (IE: cold storage for fish, whales, crab, etc.) small buildings with limited storage space for natural resources; let the player pick which resource to hold in the block house like choosing a structure type in TWS2 OR limit the number of block house slots to the level of the port, Import Warehouses; bigger than a block house with better storage capacity used to keep imported goods. Number of IW's limited to level of port but each IW slot can only hold a single good at a time and so you must move out the goods to free up the space. Export Warehouses; same as IW's except the EW slots only hold export goods. Armory; for storing all the armaments, powder kegs and ammo for the navy.
    Commerce- these are your money making buildings (IE: port tax offices, trade guilds, fish and import shops/markets/companies, currency exchanges, etc.).
    Defenses- permanent structures to help defend the port (IE: walls, towers, siege weapon emplacements, harbor chains/nets, etc.)
    Military- all the normal military bldgs for constructing a navy (IE: Admiralty, shipyard, drydocks, training centers, cannon foundries, etc.)

    Now that you have the structures to build, CA can make units or agent-type units to use with the ports:

    Trade Units- trade ships (varying types), fishing vessels, and maybe even a junk (Chinese boat) or a special boat type as a floating supply depot to deliver arms, fuel or ammo to visiting ships.
    Trade Agents- port merchant (as in the old ones from previous TW games); establishes trade routes with resources found in the port storage bldgs. Can be sent to trade partner ports to complete the trade link from your ports, trader; a unit sort of like the trade ships in ETW that you can load up and send goods to trade posts on land.
    Commerce Units- can be the military arm of the trade guilds or large companies that are in the ports. These are special units that are bought and led by the company and not actual parts of the faction's military (IE: East India Trade Company, or the Virginia Company). They can be recruited as mercs or only spawn as garrisons when the port is attacked.
    Commerce Agents- these can be agents to improve the efficiency of the trade, storage, or commerce bldgs in the port. (IE: a tax collector that can be placed in a commerce bldg to increase the tax income w/out affecting the sentiment of the population).
    Defense Units- archers, sappers, siege units, etc. for the time period used to man the defense bldgs you construct.
    Military Units- these are all the normal navy units you'd normally recruit.
    I quite like this idea. As for the civilian commerce/fishing ships, a softer, more interesting solution could be that you don't build them, but the quantity of this are linked to the commerce/fishing buildings tier. The higher this are, the more ships of one class the port can harbor and the more money, food and products you get from it. The ships would be build by the local civilian population or just come from another of your ports. This way you'll feel more like the governor/ruler and less like a God that have to make sure everything to happen by himself. Of course that's my opinion only.


    - Bring back the individual tax levels for every city: I think this one is pretty simple, and like some one else said, you could still use a global bar to make it easy on the people that do like the global tax rate.

    - Allow the moving of the capital: this one is pretty selfs explanatory. It was possible before, it should be possible again.

    - A better application of population mechanics: Every total war game takes place in a Geo-historical place where caste, feudal and economic reasons split the people in very well defined population classes. Generally it will be slaves or serfs, free commoners(peasants, merchants, artisans and basic foot soldiers), warriors (land owners and their direct vassals/retainers, military elite) and nobility and/or the royal family (this putting aside the religious folks that depending on the context where between the commoner and the warriors or the warrior and the nobility). A relation between the numbers of every kind of population should be keep, or unhappiness, unrest and full revolts could occur!

    - Different amounts of wealth should be assigned to every kind of population: This will allow to have distinct balances like a province with poor commoners and land owners translating on a low tax base province with poorly equipped professional/feudal (composed by land owners) troops, or one with poor commoners but rich land owners where even when the tax base is low, the professional troops will have good quality equipment and readiness.

    - A combination between the old and the new building system: Being able to build several buildings at the time seems to be a logical possibility, I mean, it's a city after all, not every one work in the very same thing at the very same time, one thing after another. To balance this, the construction should be capped by the labor available on the city. I. E. a city of 10K habitants have a hand labor available for building of 1000. Building a barrack would need 300 workers for x turns, and a cathedral would need at least 600 for other x turns, that leaves you with only 100 workers, so you are allowed to build things that need that many labor or below. Or maybe one could start another building, lets say city walls, that do require more than 100 workers, but until more workers are available, (either when the barracks or the cathedral are finished, by acquiring slaves or simply by population growth) the walls will take a lot longer to be finished.

    - Some buildings requiring labor: Some buildings should permanently require labor (among upkeep and other resources), for example the "farm building" should be very labor demanding. In the past example, of the 10K people, assuming at least 8000 lower class individuals, maybe 2000 of them would be needed for farming. 1000 should be needed to gov buildings like armories and the sort, and the rest would pursuit their own economic interests, causing more income in the form of commerce taxing, etc.. When recruiting you could choose which kind of population to drain first. See the army part.

    - A direct relation between the quality of soil, the amount of food and the population numbers: That should affect not only the trade and commerce, but also the population numbers. An example on the spoiler:
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    It fairly simple, make a food resource for the game. Food production on each region is directly affected by the natural fertility, the farm output (tier), the population and the trade.

    - Natural fertility could depend on the season and the size of the arable land in the province. Giving penalties or bonuses to farm output. So it could add or rest to the amount of food produced.

    - Farms output should depend on the amount of farms in the province, that would depend on the size of the rural population* of the province, the amount of money spend, laws or incentives made by the state(you) to improve agriculture and the competition of luxury plantations as grapes. Certain agricultural developments and techniques (technologies) depending on the faction, location and date of the game would affect farm output too. This output adds to the quantity of food produced.

    - The population of the province eats away the food production; ideally the amount consumed should be inferior to the amount produced.

    - In either case trade comes in. If there's surplus of food then it could be traded automatically with other provinces of your empire that do not produce enough food. If there's a lack of food then the province should import automatically from other province of your empire depending on distance and state of the roads/ports.

    - Any food your province doesn’t trade away gets stored on specialized buildings (silos). These buildings would intercept any surplus of food produced or received by the province.

    - Once the silos are full the exceeding food could be traded away with other empires. Whatever amount of food is not consumed, stored or traded away in a turn is converted into X amount of money, bonus population growth a happiness bonus or any combination of those.

    - On the other hand, if overall your empire do not produce enough food you will be forced to either trade with other empires or conquer more land (on this regard you can make the AI to aim for the most fertile, sufficient undefended and near enemy or neutral provinces).


    - Don't restrict the number of buildings every province could have: if there is the will, the money and the materials, why not build it? Restricting the number of buildings a province can bare seems like a too much forced way to provide strategic decisions by dumbing down the game at the same time. The only buildings that should be keep at check should be the royalty or government ones (like having a single faction-leader-palace, kings earls and the sort, at the same time) and the ones that are connected to natural or human features, like wonders and natural marvels.

    - Every town/special building in the province should be garrisoned: Again, like in ETW. Ports and other important towns and the sort could be protected better. For controlling this, there could be a cap on how many units can be garrisoned in them, that you can increase by investing on the town itself. I.e. a coastal town could have a "army camp" or garrison building besides the normal port buildings, and as you upgrade it along with the port you can have more and more troops defending it and why not, even have better defenses, walls, cannons, towers etc.. For further balance of this, developing the garrison capacity on a town can have negative effects, like if one militarizes to much a port the income of it could be lower than that of a more civil one.

    - Every town/special building in the province should be captured individually: This is especially true with the ports. If you only have a navy you can block the port and you have an army transported on the navy, you can capture that port prior invading the province, and then you could have access to reinforcements and supplies (more of this one below) trough sea. The other "villages" on the province can be occupied/sacked for supplies too and other resources and/or just deny them to the enemy. They should remain like propriety of the invader as long there's enough troops in there to quench the discontent.

    - Resuming the last two options in a short sentence, make the special towns/buildings smaller cities that with enough investment and time can grow on pair of province capital.

    - Give me back the chance to look at MY cities: again like in Rome Total War. This has been missing since then and even when it does not add to much to gameplay it was made 101% of awesomeness and badassery!! Back then I believed that CA was made by the best world's programmers and artists!

    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    To make the places even more vivid, routes of citizens could be automatically traced between buildings. Like the one between the barracks and the blacksmith, people "spawned" from houses should go to the markets, forums, baths, temples and other buildings, while census workers should go to houses, barracks people should go to the blacksmith and maybe to the walls and towers, other people should be going in and out of the city, to farms outside or simply out of the map, traveling, etc... then you’ll have a very vivid city to care for, with "true" people that live and die under your rule, instead of cities being some abstract bar with icons on the campaign map and you being the ruler of a lot of ghost towns, whom inhabitants you see only when they rise up to chop your head off!!




    Army mechanics
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

    - Simultaneous movement: in one's turn, one should be able to only command were the armies will go, this is, instruct the orders to your generals, and when the end of turn button is clicked every army, human and AI alike, start to move. Then when armies intercept and/or ambushes each other, battles are fought, and when armies reach a enemy city sieges are started and/or assaults are made. This will avoid having to use the zone of control of the armies and the bottleneck filled campaign map to balance the maneuvering of human and AI armies, also it adds maneuvering armies as a better strategic challenge. Having a general that forces your armies to march faster is more important now for example as taking gain of a bridge or other natural bottleneck, by getting there before the enemy will be important. The current system is called "I go, you go", the system I propose is called "we go"

    - Training in battalions: Right now the units are trained at platoon or company level at most and some special units are recruited as squads! This is Total War! We should have the option to train greater masses of troops. The units could (while having the tech and infrastructure) be recruited in a more wider way. On the campaign map, you should be able to recruit "regiment" or "battalion", and that's what you see in the army on the campaign map. But each battalion is made up of several companies and/or platoons, and that's what you see on the battle map. Companies from the same battalion can move independently only in battle. Of course training a battalion it's more time intensive, but the result should be better quality troops, that knows how to fight relaying on each other (depending on the historical context). This could be translated to a moral, defense, accuracy or whatever bonus to units attached/trained to/with battalions. This would require an update of the GUI and battle engine to accommodate more units (companies). Also this would allow stacks build up on a more realistic way, having mixes of main infantry, skirmishers, assault troops... (contrary to the current system where it's possible to have armies composed of only elites for example). The fun side of this is that one should be able to customize the battalions, make new ones and edit/delete/outdated the older ones. Some games like Rome based can have preset compositions (like legions or cohorts). This is not only more realistic (armies where trained by the thousands, not the dozens at the same time). This could also let the players to plan more ahead, have a better training strategy and spend less time on the training screen (once you made up how your basic battalion/regiment would be it's a matter of only clicking once). In the other hand irregular units like levies of peasants could still be trained individually for garrison or makeshifts forces.
    An example of this is on the spoiler:
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    Example with NTW :
    - You can recruit a French line infantry battalion of 840 men. They appear in the army as a global "infantry battalion", with a total of 840 men. If you right click on the unit, you see the companies inside, with their number. In that case 1 grenadier companies of 140 men, 1 Voltigeurs Company of 140 men, and 4 fusilier companies of 140 men.
    - When you go to a battle, the battalion is automatically deployed as 6 independent companies.


    - Being able to retrain/re-equip units: In order to re-equip them or add new abilities. This should be doable even on the field(strategy campaign), the re-equip by paying a money fee and waiting some time (so the new equipment comes along the supply line from the nearest "armory" that produce it). The retrain by having a capable general, a fort, and paying some money and waiting some time too (while new recruits and equipment comes along the supply route). This too could allow to certain units to change from regular ones to elite ones once certain thresholds have been reached. For example after a regular line infantry unit gets to experience level 6 they can be changed to Republican Army, so you upgrade them for a price (receive new uniforms, better weapons and whatnot). You could do this on a city (taking less turns) or in the field (if a general is present) taking a bit more of time and money?

    - Change the max size of armies and its caps: Please, more than 20 unit cards per battle. As well, traits on generals should increase or decrease the amount of units they can bare on their stacks. On the other side, a army without a general should not be allowed to have more than let's say 3 or 4 units, even less. BUT small armies could have less chances of being intercepted or ambushed by bigger ones and should have some advantages regarding supply, movement and sight. This theoretically could led to relative small forces causing havoc, raiding undefended ports, farms and the like. With this mechanics you can have a main army marching towards the enemy while a small scout force could go ahead and scout for ambushes (by spotting them or triggering them and escaping if possible). Also some events and logistics techs could increase the max size of the armies.

    - Supply system for armies and navies: The addition of the attrition on the game is a very nice improvement. However the fact that in theory an army can stand on the middle of enemy territory for years if it's left undisturbed without any penalty beyond losing few men every winter is disturbing, and is a big setback for the strategy part of the game. Implementing a supply system, along with better maneuvering, having to plan ahead a route for movement of troops and potentially supplies too would give a lot of strategic deepness to the game. Supplies should be delivered like the trade routes both by land and sea, that follow the army as soon it comes out of your territory, coming from the nearest controlled port and/or town big enough to support the army, in the land they could naturally follow the preexistent roads, on the sea they could follow the trade routes. The supplies bar/counter of the units in the army would remain filled as long the army is still connected to the supply route. This supply routes should cost money, the longer they are, the more they add to the basic upkeep of the units in the army and when the army goes back to your territory their upkeep should go back to normal again. Also longer supply routes should refill the supply more slowly, so if you stretch your lines too much even if you are connected the supply of your army can go down to zero unless you either conquer a near port, take a city(able to supply you) or develop new technologies. For more customization you could be asked or be able to decide whether or not an army would required supply lines when they leave your territory.

    Raiding these routes with land or naval forces depending on the case should cause the army to stop receiving supplies (Imagine you can stop a siege by raiding supply routes for a couple of turns with a small cavalry force?). In the event the army is effectively separated from its supply route it's supplies bar/counter should drop very rapidly, maybe in 1, 2 or 3 turns tops unless it has special proprieties, traits, units or you have technologies that further. An army without supplies could have a rapid drop in moral, effectiveness and will, it could have soldiers routing from the units and even whole units disbanding in the campaign map if they can't forage, pillage and/or scavenge what they need fast enough from local settlements, and the worst thing is that they might be more susceptible to bribery, depending on the general stats and traits. The same could apply to besieged armies in cities and forts, because basically besieging means cutting the enemy's supply in the hopes of making them surrender without too much fight. If a supply system is employed then the sieges could become more natural and organic instead of a repetitive issue with a artificial turn cap on it. This could also open up a new diplomatic option, ask for another faction (friendly or ally) for supplies, be it for an army or a city.

    Now, the navies shouldn't be able to auto supply (unless they are on a friendly trade route or is sacking a enemy one), they should put the anchor on one of your ports, or an ally or friendly one in case there's a arrangement about supplying military forces. Ships/navies without supply will be more sensitive to mutiny and betray, and also will experience men losses like in Shogun 2 when they are at open sea. Beside this, some ships should be able to supply armies that are near a coast but stranded outside regular supply routes, this will give certain ships like the hypothetical troop transports or merchant ships a second and much valuated ability, bringing not only reinforcements but also supplies to your invading forces until you are able to capture a city with a port, from then on it will be understood that the supply train could be carried by private merchants, not requiring "official navy" warships anymore.

    - Re-filling ranks in enemy provinces: As long as the army is supplied the casualties could be replaced at a slower phase perhaps?

    - Campaign ammo counter to ranged units: This one should not be a problem as long the army receives supplies. Once that is not the case anymore, this ammo counter should be activated, in every following battle the ranged units that use arrows will start with less ammo (few projectiles could be recovered/scavenged from the previous battles) and when the campaign counter reach 0 the ranged units start the battle totally depleted. For gun powder units the decrease should be even more drastic since is a lot harder to scavenge bullets. Perhaps a way around this could be a ancillary for the army/general like "field bullet/fletcher workshop", that in turn, will make the upkeep higher than normal or will require more supplies. Rock throwers units like slinger and catapults should not have this one since rocks are everywhere, unless they are in the desert...

    - Speaking of desertion and all that, Rōnin and mercenaries in other games: should be recruited with the old mercenary system. I miss this lot on S2TW, if it has it I don't find it anywhere beyond some dilemma thing... The number of Rōnin and mercenaries should increase as factions are eliminated and more troops routes (surviving) in battles.

    - Weapons and resources: Actually weapons could be used as resources and a limit of which kind of troops you can recruit too. By this I mean that if you want to recruit a company of swordsmen then you need X amount of swords on your stores on the province where you are training them. The same goes with bows and arrows, spears, pikes and lances, shields and armor, horses, muskets and munitions, cannons and son on... The materials and/or quality of said items would affect the troops recruited using them. If you loss a province with weapons/equipment on it, then the enemy can reequip it's troops with them (if superior) and use them to push it's attack or ship them back home to train units with them and even have a chance to be able to retro-engineer them (if are complex/advanced weapons) to start producing them. All this things should be produced on turn basis by the horse breeders, weapons smiths and so on, the more advanced the building is (and the tech available to it) , the more quantity/quality equipment it will churn out per turn. On the other hand one could let the private industries to manufacture the weapons, but this would increase the cost of the units and would represent a increased danger of uprising (the private dealers could arm the civil population). All this come from the fact that in ancient times making any kind of weapons beyond a club, especially the high quality ones was intrinsically difficult, and also a mechanic like this would simulate the knowledge transfer of some techs like did happen on real life (thought conquest).

    - The recruitment of units should affect not only the population numbers but the balance of the types of populations: A "spear militia" should only need commoners, while a "armored lancer" could need commoners as retainers that does not appear in battle and land owners as the fighting dudes on the battlefield. Other kind of units could require some nobility, more land owners and a lot of commoners... In the case of commoners composed units, since the "buildings" required common labor (see Some buildings requiring labor in the Cities and Towns section) one should be able to put a priority on which population drain first when recruiting units, if you choose rural population first the income would not be hindered immediately but on the long run food shortage would be a problem unless enough people moves back to the fields quickly enough. If you choose the urban population then you will not touch the food production but will hinder the economics of the city immediately. Each kind could also give extra bonuses or penalties depending on other factors. Also the time it takes to "train units" should be a little tweaked, depending on the kind of population a unit requires.

    - Really different units?: The difference of units should come from their stats and appearance as it is now, BUT this should apply even between two units of the same type, like two yari ashigaru units having differences, both practical and visual. This should be specially thanked in a game like Shogun in which units tends to look and be the same since its a civil war. This, as I stated on the battles section would help a lot. The faction, region and buildings available should determinate a lot in the initial appearance like its color, shape of armor and weapons and the stats of the units. Here it’s a edited, more deep analysis of the last two pints, that I made some time ago. Although all this would reflect on the battle map and maybe this point belong to the Battles section, the mechanics behind mostly involve the campaign, so here it is:
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    NOTE: I'm using the 12 years per mod now, and also I'm a dreamer about the length of modding that could be applied, so some crazy arguments could come out from this:

    I have been thinking about this... all samurai should be recruited in one two turns tops, because they are the land lords that have been training all their lives in the use of weapons. They are "ever ready to fight" guys, only waiting to be called upon service for their overlords, and once recruited they should have some experience right of the bat, not that much but some, and even some extra according to the dojos present on the region they come from. And for the weapons and armor, as they buy it for themselves it should depend on the wealth of the land owner class on the region. A wealthy class in the region means that the samurais (the land owners) are rich and can buy expensive armor and weapons. A poor region should have its samurais with (relative) low quality armor and weapons.

    On the other hand the ashigaru should need more turns to be conscripted, since they have to be gathered, and then trained (assuming they have not served before, they were just peasants before recruitment). So a mob of peasants will be ready in one turn. Yari ashigaru, being the most basic weapon should need one month or two, while yumi would need more months of practice, at least 4 I think (unless they where bow hunters), the teppo is even easier so two or one month would do it too. The speed of this can also be influenced by the population numbers on the region. The officers in provinces with excess of population should have no problem finding young people to fill in the ranks, maybe lessing the training time a month, while a scarce populated area will add a month or more to the training. Their experience should always be green as they really are green, having never used a weapon of war before. Their armor and weapons should be relative to the local weapon and armor smith (built by the player) since this is the "government one", that provides armor and weaponry to the conscripted troops, also the stats like melee damage and charging should be increased by the encampment building and it's upgrades, but this obviously would also add some months of training.

    So if you want really light and cheap ashigaru, don't make either armory or encampments/barracks/etc on the province and recruit them in a really populated one, you will be filling stacks really soon, they will be fragile but faster to replenish too, so if you have the population and the will to do so, what is stooping you? Or the other way around, you could build professional ashigaru armies by making barracks and armories on the provinces you choose to, but they will be more expensive and slow to muster.

    All of this should also reflect on the units you see on the battlefield. Every unit should have a few models, like unarmored poor ashigaru, armored poor ashigaru, armored middle class ashigaru, unarmored middle class ashigaru, poor samurai, middle class samurai, rich samurai. And according to the status of the unit more models of one kind should appear in it on the battlefield. I.e. a samurai unit of 100 man recruited from a poor province would have like 80 poor samurai models, 15 middle samurai and only 5 rich samurai. This would be only aesthetically since the unit stats would be given at the moment of recruitment, but it can help to differentiate and give even more variety to the units on the battlefield. Maybe as they progress in experience they would be able to buy/scavenge better armor and weapons, so they start to look better in the battlefield and have better stats? I don't know, I'm still dreaming.

    And not only the ashigaru would be slower to recruit in this system, but also more expensive, since you are the one paying for their equipment and upkeep, while the samurai would pay for most of their stuff and then only will require the upkeep while being mobilized.

    This is pretty unbalanced and crazy right? A upside down kinda of world? Well even being faster and cheaper to recruit than the ashigaru, the samurai would not be as viable as the ashigaru, at least in the early game. See, all this is based on the fact that two types or more of population can be added to provinces and then affected by recruitment, so their Achilles' heel would be the fact that you will never be able to mobilize as many samurai as ashigaru.

    You won’t be able, let's say recruit 12K samurai's in a year and start seeding the terror on your enemies, since this unbalance on the population classes would lead to a revolt, unrest and less income from your provinces (no one is there controlling the peasants). This will cap the quantity of samurai on the battlefields with some true logic and not some arbitrary head count number.

    In the end if you perceive that the immediate threat if gone, or that the troops at hand are not needed anymore then you disband them and they numbers go back to a town. Especially good if you are short of labor on the fields or nobles to run and control said fields.

    As you progress over the sengoku era and more "tech advances" are made, you can research something like higher mobilization, or laws/edicts(tech) that blur the line between ashigaru and samurai (like it happened in real life), so samurai units would require less land owner population and more common population (common folks with weapon skills). Keeping this trend (if one choose to) by the late game most armies would be composed of "samurai" units, only that this samurai units will not require so much land owner population, having a lot of the ashigaru filling in the ranks like the lower kind of samurai, so we can see a transition from the levy feudal peasant armies to more professional full time armies as it happen in the real Japan.


    - A levy, or temporal units system: To represent some seasonal troops, like peasants units better, make them real cheap and fast to gather (even requiring 0 turns), but make then disband automatically at the end of x amount of turns, or at the arriving of x season. This should apply only to the only peasant sort of units, or maybe to some other kind of special units in some factions that the current garrison mechanics does not represent very well.

    - Better troop transport representation on the sea: Troops transported in navies should require transports or have some requirements to prevent the horrible stack of doom of 10K soldiers stuffed like canned ham on a single pedal boat, period. For this several propositions have been made. Before I proposed any one of the three contained in the following spoiler:
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 
    The simplest way to go is to assign every ship a certain slot capacity, so i. e. a normal bune could carry 1 single unit, while a heavy bune could carry 3 while the smaller ships should have none transport capacity. In the end to transport a full stack you will need a whole navy, no more lonely koyaba transporting 10K soldiers. This is not very realistic in most cases, but can be a simple, yet interesting solution.

    On the other hand is a more fancy but complicated solution. You move an army to a port, and then select embark, buying/renting transports. Now a single ship would represent the fleet of the embarked army. This ship/fleet could be added to any navy stack (even a full one, sort of like the agents) and then escorted to its destination. In case of being intercepted the navy will fight, if the escorting navy wins nothing special happen, but if it loses, then the transport ship/fleet will try to flee for the nearest shore (having relative low movement points). Now, in the case this embarked army is intercepted without escorts or is intercepted after fleeing a battle, then it could either get auto destroyed or a battle with some random transports could occur. This transports would be lightly armored and armed, varying in size but all of them mostly being slow and cumbersome.

    On the gripping hand, one could simply have dedicated transport ships, which will serve both as transports and as combat ships, having some moderate to low fighting abilities. These ships could be attached to navies in a regular way, the smaller should support only one or few units, while the bigger ones should be capable of transporting several units at the same time. Other function to these ships could be to bring supplies to stranded armies that cannot receive supplies by land and have not captured a port yet. This third solution can coexist with any of the above solutions, thus giving more strategic options to the trouble of naval transport representation.

    However as far as Rome II, we got these horrible transformer armies that turned into boats as soon they touched a beach, with no cost, no delays, no nothing. They are, simply put, awful implemented. It gives a full navy capacity to any faction, even those that don't have a coastal province or that historically didn't have navies at all. Not that I'm against historical deviation once the game starts, however that deviation needs to be natural and not forced trough badly thought mechanics. For example, yes, Gauls can become a Mediterranean naval power, I'm not against that in principle, but let them first rewrite history a bit, have the real need for it, fight for it and find the right techs trough conquest or any other means, and then, after some turns and getting their hands of places and knowledge and only then, they should be able to start building/use ships.

    However what we have now is an scenario where Gauls has access to a full Mediterranean navy, capable of rivaling and defeating Carthage from turn 1, and no, dwarfing the "transports" that are in fact warships doesn't fix the issue, as you still have the problem of the high mobility and naval warmongering running rampart around the whole map, nations declaring war and invading lads so far away that would put the late British Empire into shame.

    The solutions for this problem, in my opinion is to implement the following mechanic, which would amount to a further develop of the very first option of the first spoiler and goes like this:
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

    I'm okay transports being fit warships when context is appropriate, but I'm not okay with the Insta-Fleet the armies of Rome 2 provide. The only way to embark a fleet like that would be if you move the army to a coastal city, and from there pay a fee or some other action simulating the acquisition, conscription, rent, buying or commission of ships. You could have the following options:

    - Commerce/civilian ships: If the port in question has enough vessels or is big enough, then you can hire/force/conscript vessels and this grants you a fleet of commerce vessels non fit for combat. This could be useful for when you simply want your troops transported and are not expecting a sea battle. You get the army to a port, hire some merchant ships, they move your troops to its destiny and when you are done, you can "release" this fleet, and they go back to their own ing business. Well, this should put a commerce penalty in the port they come from relative to the size of the fleet as long the transports are attached to your troops. In the case you press the civilians "into borrowing the ships for free" this must add a unhappiness penalty to the commerce penalty. In battle this ships would be, in the case of Rome era, sailing vessels with little combat worth, like the number 1 featured here. This would balance the option as you could potentially transport your troops for free for a long time, at the expense of future income from trading taxes and your popularity.

    - Military transports: This would be the commission to build full fledged military state transports to move your troops around. Some factions could have certain advantages and have warships as transports instead. These transports would be permanent ships that would need to be supplied and payed as well.

    Now, if your army doesn't have a port nearby and you want them to embark then make them build a fleet (if resources, ie, wood is at hand). You won't pay for this fleet but the army will spend at least one turn making it. For this they should be in the coast and if attacked a "fortress" battle could ensue, as the army would logically build a small fortification around the improvised building ground if possible. Traits of the faction, the army, resources available and such would dictate how fast and good are the ships done. They might be throw away, one use ships or could become a permanent fleet, the decision is yours after you see them in action.

    As the case in point with Rome 2, sailing instantly from a shore devoid of any infrastructure is an abomination that should burn in hell forever. Of course is part of the abstraction, and 12 months is more than enough for an army to find wood, make some ships and set sail. However this is yet another failure of the IGO-THEN-YOUGO system and why a WEGO system would be far better.

    Having the army insta-transport in the abstraction of one year or less is not a break from reality, but then why is so shocking and disgusting for us? Is not unreal however we feel it on our guts, something is wrong, it's counter intuitive. And here it is why: while is true than an army would be capable of building some transports in less than a year, it wouldn't be able to do so surrounded and besieged by another army. Is the fact that during the "whole year" the turn represents, the pursuers just sit there, watching how their enemy make a lot of boats and sail way. One would think that such labor intensive and time consuming task would leave the army vulnerable, but no.

    That's why I'll be a proponent of we go systems forever. In such case a timer could be associated to building a fleet and sailing, in which case the pursuers have the chance of getting the escaping army with their pants down, thus negating the magical transformer abilities, among negating a lot of other disadvantages of the current system. Alas, I know it would never be implemented in Total War because it would be such a shock to old players not to mention CA would have to actually develop something new (that isn't graphical related).

    Resuming:

    Embarking an army from a town:
    - For free: You get a fleet of pressed to conscription merchants, not combat fit vessels immediately, however there's a commerce and happiness penalties while (and potentially some time after) you have them pressed.
    - For a lower fee: You hire a fleet of merchants, the same as above but no happiness penalty.
    - For a higher fee: You commission the construction of a fleet of ships to move troops around and you get to keep it

    Embarking an army from the coast:
    - You don't have to pay anything, but the army has to be on the coast, and it get entrenched for at least one turn while they build the ships. Different conditions would dictate what kind of fleet this would be.






    Siege mechanics
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

    - The turns until rendition should be ruled by both the food (as now) and the defenses of the location: When some location(castle, city, port, town) is besieged two counters (or bars for those that are more graphical) should appear on it. One should indicate the amount of supplies the location have (food, water, common goods) and the other indicating the state of its defenses (towers, walls). These bars would go down at different rates, the supply one depending of the amount of population and stored food, and the other will go down progressively only if the besieger has artillery capable of handling the defenses, as long said artillery is keep supplied on the campaign map or if the army is capable of sapping, the walls sensible to be sapped and it's ordered by the besieger. At the moment either of this bars/counters reach zero the final assault/rendition happens, and if the assault comes as the product of the walls/defenses failing, on the battle map the walls should be weak enough to be destroyed with a few strikes perhaps, or even have parts utterly destroyed. If the attacker does not have any sort of artillery (or artillery capable of taking out the defenses) then this counter/bar should not start to drop until the attacker bring or build some siege artillery capable of taking out the defenses. This could give the players a good way to know if is better to assault or wait until the defender sally out. If you have no artillery and the enemy is well supplied you should rethink your strategy. Also in the higher levels of difficulty the first bar (the food) should be hidden from you unless you have a spy on the city beforehand. This also disable the insta-assault-fest that CA say has plagued the game, since in reality even with trebuchets, bringing down a well built wall was a matter of weeks or months of constant bombardment with heavy rocks, not minutes like it's shown in the game.

    - When besieging, both sides should take casualties: Until rendition or assault both sides should take casualties on the campaign map, as a siege won’t be exempt of small skirmishes prior to the assault/rendition. In fact, along with the siege equipment, the siege screen should have slots where you specifically state which units will be instigating the enemy. This even makes space to specialized units like the crossbowmen with pavise, that should take less casualties than normal units in this way. Additional to this if the defenders have artillery too they can respond in kind not only during the tactical assault but during the strategic siege like the attackers on the point above. Depending on the type and range they could even destroy enemy artillery during the strategic siege as well as during the assault.


    Agents
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

    Agent recruitment: This is more a matter of personal tastes, and it based on how the fact that ninja building gives you money is really nonsensical... but here it comes anyway as an analysis I made some time now:
    Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

    Regarding the economic/ninja buildings, that’s kind of weird, I think that because of the nature of the ninjas they should be accessible from researching "tech" only. I mean, a governor would in reality make a crime syndicate building and then say, hey criminals and other assorted garbage, I made you a nice place to hang around, now go there, drink, pay us money and train ninjas ok???!! That's non sense, especially if doing that means that you are using the last spot of land EVER in the city, so you won't be able to build anything else.

    I think that it should go as this:
    1- You first "research the ninja", the time of this research actually represent the time the Daimyō takes to evaluate if he will allow or not the hiring/using of ninjas on behalf of his clan (Is not like you have to invent the jujitsu and then train them!). This should be a really quick research or perhaps a dilemma choice.

    2- After you let the research concludes/accept the dilemma, meaning that the Daimyō has finally allowed the hiring of ninjas, you will be able to hire them in some provinces based on the preexistence of the jujitsu academies and the distance to them. Or maybe the public order (the lower the better), or some other variable. Or you can recruit them in all of the provinces after you "researched" them, but to prevent the hiring of ninjas everywhere a rule should be used that only allows their recruitment in the first one, two or three cities they were hired, or a proportional number of the total provinces. I mean, let’s say you have 5 provinces, when you finish the research/dilemma, you would have the option of recruit a ninja in every single province, but when you recruit a ninja in any of those provinces then you can only keep recruit them from that one from now on. But if you have 10 provinces then it would allow you to hire them in the first two provinces instead of one, and so on.

    3- When you finally hire the services of a ninja (or crime organization for another kind of agents) then the city where you hired it gets a special attribute or building, the crime syndicate or any other name that suits this porpoise. It does not matter if is a attribute like the ancillaries, or if is a more classic building, the main thing is that it should not cost you, it should not take one of the already scarce slots of the city and you shouldn't be able to directly control it's growth.

    4- Then, the more you hire/use the ninjas the more they go up like normal, but using them and hiring new ones also adds to the development of the crime syndicate of the city they come from. The increase of this "trait" or building on a city should not only means better ninjas, but also should have some other secondary effects like lowering the public order, or why not decreasing or increasing some of the income of the city. The only way to get rid of this should be trough "demolishing" the building or trait, effectively ending the illegal stuff on your cities, but then you'll lose the ability to hire ninjas from there, this should cost money too. Other less historical option is to make a Metsuke do that when you order him to enter a city. In either of both cases the demolition should have a chance "of not ending well", so the negative effects of the criminal dudes gets increased a few turns in which duration the probability of failing in trying to get rid of it again should increase (they are not happy of your attempts of killing/arrest them).


    Agent management: I'm more in favor of the abstraction of this series of services. Picture, imagine if you will, a screen or frame, with the map of the whole known world at the right, taking most of the screen, it's provinces and who owns what... A mini map for all purposes and intention. Now, contemplate that at the left, for what it's left of this frame, there's a list. This list reflects several things and have sliders, yes, sliders that go from 0 to 100%. These sliders describe things like commercial interest, religion conversion, espionage, sabotage and other non conventional shenanigans, and right below there's the amount of money you spend on them.

    As you click on regions on the mini map, the list changes to reflect how much you care and therefore invest on the underground of each region, and the trick is that for very well, known, or even own provinces establishing a spy network to keep your own forces on check and protect you from outsiders is not that really hard compared for example to do the same in unknown enemy territory. This will reflect on the cost of this networks. Let's suppose you are playing as Rome, then having them in the city Rome itself at 100% would cost you let's say, 50 pieces of gold per turn, while having them at 100% in let's say, Britain will cost you 1000 pieces of gold per turn, at least until the region it's pacified and fully integrated to your empire.

    Now, as you have this sliders up your mole network will start to grow on the region, adding "points", levels or percentage to it, progressively and directly proportional to the amount of interest you put on them versus certain things like the happiness of the region with their current government and certain cultural modifiers. It would be really hard and expensive for Rome to have a spy network in Cartage for example.

    Anyhow, as your networks start to grow, things start to happen at certain levels, like gaining random information about troop movements and camps, city population and happiness. Those would be passive actions that would happen automatically with minimal chances of getting caught.

    Then there are the active actions, like ordering the untimely dead of a specific political or military figure, the occasional fire of certain buildings and so on. But before you order those things you need to have certain levels of certain networks on those provinces. And each time you order something the level of that province lowers a little or a lot depending on the importance of your deeds. Burning a farm is not so much notorious as trying to kill the emperor or chieftain don't you think? This way each time you order something the level of the network drops, this, combined with a capped max amount of "points" in each region gives a mechanism that will be refraining you and the AI from simply stocking lots of points and razing all with your spies and assassins for example.

    As logic dictates, failed attempts could randomly drop the network level or "points" far more or even outright destroying the whole network with the risk of exposing you. But even successful attempts are not out of the scope of blowing everything. Why you ask? Imagine the agent gets caught, either after being successfully or not (of course failed attempts are way more prone to get caught) and he don't kill himself as ordered, and starts to sing all about who hired him and so on. This would make this kind of move more risky and exciting, adding a little more randomness and making developing a good network a necessity to get the job done.

    Also this way you could have a more organized way to control agents AND don't have the hassle of moving them around the battle map.


    Loved-Hated Generals/Agents: The leader, the generals and some "public" agents like gentlemen and civilian governors should have local and empire-wide moral effects like a loved general increasing the happiness faction wide and it's death producing unhappiness, if the death is in battle and/or at the hands of a another faction this could increase a casus bellis toward that faction! While seeing a hated leader die could increase happiness, and in the case of assassination or especially with death in combat it could increase the chance of towns/governors defecting to the faction that killed the hated leader.


    Modding
    This has made the TW series popular in the past. A more friendly and supportive attitude towards modding could help even further. Also, if by any chance CA or Sega feel threaten by modders unlocking DLC or anything else then which better way to stop this than regulating it! Make some mod tools that allow people to mod the game, but at the same time protects the code and content you want to protect. That would be a bipartite solution! Modders would feel supported, and you will be secure. DONE Well, might not be perfect, but the official mod tools are here aren't they?

    Format of delivery and other stuff
    The game should have hard copies, not be only steam. So people that like steam would happily buy it that way, people that want a hard copy of it would get that too.
    Also, include a LAN battle and LAN campaign option. Are you really that much afraid about piracy?! Don't you trust the quality of your games enough?

    DLC policy
    - Please make them more juicy, you could charge higher if they really add new content to the game. Don't waste resources and the patience if your players with stupid DLC that only add some new textures... really. However I know it's not your call on every one, which bring me to the question, can't The Creative Assembly fly solo? Without the restrictions of it's current Publisher?? I think that sales would be the same if we take the name SEGA out of the equation.... I know it's next to impossible but a kickstarter it's all needed and SEGA can keep the Total War name, you can name it whatever you want, I would buy Med 2 again or any improvement over that even if it's called Hello Kitty Tea Party With Friends.


    In the end I will like to point out that some ideas are not my original creations, but more a recollection of opinions I have seen trough forums. Also I propose every one of them that changes gameplay as options chosen from the gameplay options menu. I don't like forcing things on other persons.

    Those where my two cents about the TW to this date. Thanks again for reading to my crazy deliriums.
    Last edited by Lord Baal; May 11, 2015 at 10:48 AM. Reason: UPDATE 22-10-2014. This has become a journal of.. something. I don't know, I just hopes it becomes usefull someday.
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  2. #2
    Crazyeyesreaper's Avatar Primicerius
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    Default Re: A not so common wish list for the next total war

    I was to be able to attach generals to any regular unit, lower there chance of death up the chance for capture, during Sengoku Jidai not every general fought with a cavalry bodyguard the Daimyo may have but many generals led musket troops or spearmen etc, bring back Shogun Is mechanic with Generals in every unit that gain abilities and improve over time, with the ability to move them from 1 unit to another so you can boost your units abilities before an important battle.
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  3. #3
    Greve Af Göteborg's Avatar Protector Domesticus
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    Default Re: A not so common wish list for the next total war

    I've got one suggestion. Separate graphics settings for battle map and campaign map.
    Right now I've got crappy performance on the campaign map and excellent performance on the battle map.

  4. #4

    Default Re: A not so common wish list for the next total war

    My Wishes:

    1. Moddable
    2. Steam Optional
    3. Competant and competitive CAI and BAI.

    That's all.
    The extra development time will allow us to finalize and polish Empire, making it the most accomplished and epic of the Total War series." said Kieran Brigden, Studio Communications Manager at The Creative Assembly. "There is a great deal of anticipation around Empire: Total War and we want to ensure that it is the benchmark for strategy games upon its release.

  5. #5
    Lord Baal's Avatar Praefectus
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    Default Re: A not so common wish list for the next total war

    @ Crazyeyesreaper the general interchange was micromanagement work, but was totally awesome, since it was optional, it was not vital to conclude the campaign, but it could help if you knew how to use it. As for the general not fighting on horse, I don't know, that would lead to a lot of people complaining, and even when generals where sitting down it their chairs in this period is more awesome to having them on the horse. May be a trait or ancillary should let them fight on horse indeed.

    In sieges I would garrison them in the Tenshu if I could.

    @ Greve Af Göteborg, I don't understand pretty well what you are asking. I'm talking more about the mechanics of the game than the actual performance or graphics, for me the eye candy in strategy and tactical war games is not really that important.
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  6. #6

    Default Re: A not so common wish list for the next total war

    1. No amd or nvidia buying out the tech rights
    2. Better Pr (more advance notice on changes/product details)
    3. Less wait for patches
    4. No melee lag (although its got a lot better)

    I agree i think with most of what you are saying. Would have to think a bit more about some of the details but I think the most important part you highlighted was to do with garrisonable buildings and the siege mechanics.
    Last edited by Totalheadache; May 11, 2011 at 03:00 PM.

  7. #7
    Greve Af Göteborg's Avatar Protector Domesticus
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    Default Re: A not so common wish list for the next total war

    Quote Originally Posted by Lordbaal19 View Post
    @ Greve Af Göteborg, I don't understand pretty well what you are asking. I'm talking more about the mechanics of the game than the actual performance or graphics, for me the eye candy in strategy and tactical war games is not really that important.
    Oh I was not responding to your post.
    I just hijacked your thread to squeeze my own little idea in.

  8. #8
    Lord Baal's Avatar Praefectus
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    Default Re: A not so common wish list for the next total war

    Quote Originally Posted by Greve Af Göteborg View Post
    Oh I was not responding to your post.
    I just hijacked your thread to squeeze my own little idea in.
    Oh sir! There's no need of such a naughty behavior! Would you just asked I would have loan it to you for a moment.

    @ Abspara, thanks for reading and for the input. But I'm aiming to more ideas (specific ones) on how improve the game and reviews of mines. I know not all of them will please most people.

    @ Totalheadache, thanks too for reading and for the input. I know there are some ideas I would have to elaborate more, but if I do that here at once the first page will be filled. With time I hope to keep refining them and finish this post.
    Last edited by Lord Baal; May 12, 2011 at 02:30 PM.
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  9. #9
    Lord Baal's Avatar Praefectus
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    Default Re: A not so common wish list for the next total war UPDATED 05-12-2011

    A bump (because of the update), what a shameful dispray!!
    Last edited by Lord Baal; May 13, 2011 at 07:04 AM.
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  10. #10

    Default Re: A not so common wish list for the next total war UPDATED 05-12-2011

    all i want is modding tools. for shogun 2, napoleon and empire and rome 2 when it comes and any title after that.

    modding tools guarantees the future of twc and a few other dedicated mod websites for TW.
    more importantly, it guarantees the happiness of the consumer with their product after the initial play through


  11. #11
    Lord Baal's Avatar Praefectus
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    Default Re: A not so common wish list for the next total war UPDATED 05-12-2011

    Thanks for the input bro! I think that too.
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    Raimeken's Avatar Senator
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    Default Re: A not so common wish list for the next total war UPDATED 05-12-2011

    I have just one request, get rid of the damn WARSCAPE ENGINE

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    Default Re: A not so common wish list for the next total war

    Quote Originally Posted by Lordbaal19 View Post
    @ Crazyeyesreaper the general interchange was micromanagement work, but was totally awesome, since it was optional, it was not vital to conclude the campaign, but it could help if you knew how to use it. As for the general not fighting on horse, I don't know, that would lead to a lot of people complaining, and even when generals where sitting down it their chairs in this period is more awesome to having them on the horse. May be a trait or ancillary should let them fight on horse indeed.

    In sieges I would garrison them in the Tenshu if I could.
    Point is units are great, but i feel total war fails in its approach because while all generals are random theres no historical feel no character

    Imagine playing as Say the Takeda in Shogun II, now yes they are cavalry heavy army, but now imagine having

    Baba Nobuharu

    (馬場 信春?, 1514/15 - June 29, 1575), also known as Baba Nobufusa (馬場 信房?), was a samurai of Japan's Sengoku period and one of Takeda Shingen's so-called "Twenty-Four Generals"; they were his most trusted commanders. Baba fought at the battles of Mikatagahara and Nagashino, where he led the vanguard of Takeda Katsuyori's right-wing.
    When Takeda Shingen took Fukashi castle (now Matsumoto Castle) in 1550, he entrusted it to Baba. At Mikatagahara in 1573, he led the vanguard in chasing Tokugawa Ieyasu's army back to their Hamamatsu fortress; upon seeing the gates open and braziers lit, Baba mistakenly suspected a trap, and did not press the fleeing army further. It was at Nagashino that Baba was killed, three years later, as two samurai attacked him simultaneously with their spears, taking off his head.
    The Koyo Gunkan states that Shingen often consulted Nobuharu on important matters. Prior to Nagashino, Nobuharu was reputed to have fought in 21 battles without receiving a single wound.

    Obata Masamori

    (小幡昌盛) (1534 – March 29, 1582), also known as Obata Nobusada, was one of Takeda Shingen's 'Twenty-four Generals', his most trusted commanders. He was the son of Obata Toramori, and came from western Kozuke province. He fled Kozuke and joined the Takeda around 1560. Masamori would later become the lord of Kaizu castle in Shinano province.
    Coming from a province conquered by the Takeda, Masamori belonged to the sakikata-shu (the group of vanquished enemies) within the Takeda establishment, but proved himself repeatedly by loyal service. He fought for the Takeda at Mimasetoge (1569) and Mikatagahara (1573), where he led the cavalry vanguard. At the Battle of Nagashino (1575), he supplied the largest cavalry contingent, commanding 500 mounted samurai and 1000 footmen. In the central company, commanded by Takeda Nobukado, he charged the Oda line beside the other Kozuke warlords. Eventually, as the Takeda army made no headway, the attack was called off but not until grave losses had been suffered. Wounds received at Nagashino would lead to Masamori's death.

    Yamagata Masakage

    (山県 昌景?, 1524 – June 29, 1575) was one of the 24 generals of the Takeda clan. He was famous for his red armour and skill in battlefield, and was a personal friend of Takeda Shingen. He was the younger brother of Obu Toramasa who was also a retainer of Shingen leading the famous "red fire unit" (derived from Shingen's slogan Fūrinkazan). After his brother committed Seppuku as a cover for Takeda Yoshinobu's failed rebellion, Masakage took the red fire unit title and outfitted his cavalry in bright red armor. It was said that his cavalry would always charge first in battle; sowing confusion and panic in the enemy ranks. Yamagata was a fierce warrior who fought in many battles and was given a fief in Shinano. He was present at the Battle of Mimasetoge in 1569 and captured Yoshida Castle, a Tokugawa possession, during the Mikatagahara Campaign (1572–73) and was present for the following Battle of Mikatagahara. His last campaign was in the ill fated Battle of Nagashino in 1575 where he was shot down on horse while charging together with his famous red fire unit. All of them died together with him.
    Yamagata tried to persuade Takeda Katsuyori to call off twice at the attack of Nagashino, as he knew there was a trap waiting for them, however Katsuyori didn't listen.
    Ii Naomasa from the Tokugawa clan was inspired by Yamagata's red colour, he made tribute to him by naming his army the "Red Devil Brigade."
    According to legend, Shingen called out to Yamagata from his deathbed in 1573 and ordered him to plant his banners at the Seta Bridge, the traditional eastern gateway to Kyôto.


    Now imagine much like the Nobunaga's Ambition series you have the famous generals of the period along with say the chance to create and name Generals born to your daimyo should your actualy family bloodline die etc. every unit had a commander, and usually they were men of ability. Id rather see Units become more important no more mass recruit spam, make units and generals costly etc make units cost more to maintain. Make Generals more rare harder to kill, The biggest issue i had with Total war games was theres a FEW major characters but there outfits armor were generic there units generic etc.


    Example Li Naomasa of the Tokugawa led a unit named the Red Devils a cavalry force that rode to battle in red armor should Li Naomasa be given command of a cavalry unit it boosts its abilities, and gives it a unique look etc. Make the period itself colorful, as of right now its bland with boringly average general names, no real history i realize its make your own history, but id rather actually have large scale battles with Units that have there commanders, It makes more sense in say Shogun II then most total war games but you get where im going with this. should a Shogun III ever materialize id want it to contain more focus on the generals and the units.

    Ive always enjoyed koeis titles just the battles were lackluster and boring give me that kind of gameplay / depth with full scale battles and it would be awesome, same would apply to say a Three Kingdoms Based Total War game, where as Rome 2 or Medieval 3 wouldnt probably lend itself as well.
    Last edited by Crazyeyesreaper; May 12, 2011 at 11:59 PM.
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    Xelathur's Avatar Ducenarius
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    Default Re: A not so common wish list for the next total war UPDATED 05-12-2011

    I really like this thread.

    It has reading value.
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    Lord Baal's Avatar Praefectus
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    Default Re: A not so common wish list for the next total war

    Quote Originally Posted by Crazyeyesreaper View Post
    All you said there
    Thanks again for reading. I very much appreciated your input above, and that sort of mechanics, where details give more strategy deep should be the next aim of CA. Like promoting units commanders to fully fledged generals as you said. Microwork haters wont be forced to do it but microwork lovers would appreciate it and use it a lot.

    Quote Originally Posted by Xelathur
    I really like this thread.

    It has reading value.
    Thanks a lot for reading sir. I'll try to keep it up.
    PROUD TO BE A PESANT. And for the dimwitted, I know how to spell peasant. <== This blue things are links, you click them and magical things (like not ending up like a fool) happens.
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    Default Re: A not so common wish list for the next total war UPDATED 05-12-2011

    Moved to General Discussion.
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  17. #17
    Lord Baal's Avatar Praefectus
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    Default Re: A not so common wish list for the next total war UPDATED 05-12-2011

    Pweefff Bolkonsky! You did scare me!

    Well this deal with a lot of Shogun things too? It's ok to have it here?
    Last edited by Lord Baal; May 13, 2011 at 09:12 AM.
    PROUD TO BE A PESANT. And for the dimwitted, I know how to spell peasant. <== This blue things are links, you click them and magical things (like not ending up like a fool) happens.
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  18. #18

    Default Re: A not so common wish list for the next total war UPDATED 05-12-2011

    A clear distinction between professional armies and levied armies (with clear strenght and weaknesses):

    Professional: A standing army that is at all times ready for war. It can campaign indefinitely as long as the supplies are there, and the saleries are paided. It is an effective fighting force and it is much less prone to desertion, as long as it's demands are meet. However, it is more limited in size and cost more per soldier to raise and keep. The post-Marian Roman army is an example of this.

    Levy: A levied army is made up mostly by the lower classes; farmers, merchants, citizens. It is a rather cheap fighting force and somewhat effective, but it is heavily limited. Because it isn't made up of full time professionals, you can't keep it active throughout the entire campagin, and therefore you are forced to end each campaign as fast as you possibly can. "Farmers" need to attent their crops, and will not be pleased with you keeping them against their will. Doing so will greatly reduce troop moral, raise desertion, and may even cause rebellions! The advantage over a professional army is that you can raise much larger numbers of troops in a shorter period, and the costs are lower. The pre-Marian Roman army is an example of this.

  19. #19
    Lord Baal's Avatar Praefectus
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    Default Re: A not so common wish list for the next total war UPDATED 05-12-2011

    I'm making a mod based on some of this ideas. Here it is:
    http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=453678

    And about your ideas Mr. SPECTREtm, I'm trying to implement them too! They are relative simple to do if one wants to keep it simple, without resorting to a "timer" that disbands the units if they are far away from a city... For now I see two options to do this.

    The first is to make two different kind of ashigaru units (on the current TW), one hasty mustered and other semi or full professional. Of course the professional would be more expensive, slow to recruit and would have better stats... However, and in contradiction with my first statement I find this too much simplistic! And besides being too simplistic, we already have that system, the hasty mustered are called ashigaru, the pros are called samuari.

    The second would be to have a building that greatly increase the stats of the units recruited on the region, while increasing the time and price of recruitment, to better reflect the fact that this guys are not armed with the first thing they found, but spend months training with professional weapons. This building should consume resources too, in order to represent the huge investment of having standardized armies, where you supply the weapons and armor for your guys. And this is exactly what I do now with the barracks on Shogun 2.

    In my mod after you make the encampment you have 4 options.

    You can build 3 of the more "artisan" buildings that give better individual stats than the barracks. All this are relative cheap and fast to build, consume no resources and gives a good increase to stats, but ONLY to one stat, be it charge, accuracy or melee:
    - The Hunting lodge: This gives a great increase in accuracy. This is because a hunter, which very sustain and life (and his family sustain) depends on his accuracy with the bow while hunting living prey, will have better accuracy than a guy trained by shooting on a practice target for some months.
    - Jiujitsu's dojo: This one gives a better melee capability to all the troops. A real master or masters that trains every student on the deathly arts of Jiujitsu would increase the troops capability to beat the c**p out of the other guys even without weapons! I'm undecided if this building should also increase the turns of recruitment too, since you don't learn enough of Jiujitsu in a few weeks to become such a deathly instrument...
    - Proving grounds: Here all the mustered troops would practice the fight, and how to do it coherently under the supervision of professional leaders, so they learn how to charge into the enemy lines together thus, increasing their probabilities to go back home. This is more a semi-pro building than an "artisan" one, thus I'm yet undecided if I should add a little melee and moral bonus too. If I do that then this would be the "really cheap approach" for a semi-professional army.

    And then is the fourth option, the full professional one:
    - Barracks: This complex of buildings serves to the purpose of turning those regular citizens into killing machines.. or kill them instead in the process
    The barracks provide quarters, proving grounds, and all that's needed to the training of the conscripted troops. Although this more "industrial" approach results in more capable troops in general, they lack the specialization others could have. All this of course consumes resources, so the barracks constantly needs a supply of kokku and food. Wait, isn't kokku food too, you know, rice??
    - Armory: With this the barracks becomes a truly industrial center, providing not only training, but also "first quality" equipment to the troops (only armor for now, latter I would like to extend this to weapons too). Of course this comes with yet a bigger price tag and building upkeep..
    Last edited by Lord Baal; May 23, 2011 at 10:14 AM.
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  20. #20
    Lord Baal's Avatar Praefectus
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    Default Re: A not so common wish list for the next total war UPDATED 02-06-2011

    Thread updated, minor changes and a new topic, the DLC policy. Also putted some other points on the campaing and battle mechanics...
    Last edited by Lord Baal; June 02, 2011 at 10:52 AM.
    PROUD TO BE A PESANT. And for the dimwitted, I know how to spell peasant. <== This blue things are links, you click them and magical things (like not ending up like a fool) happens.
    Visit my utterly wall of doom here.
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    Y también quieres jugar Stainless Steel 100% en español? Mira por aca.

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