Large Scale Historical Battles

[kingtigertank]

Here is an innovation I thought of for representing battles on a larger scale, which I think would be best applied to representing historical battles.

By creating a very small campaign map representing a particular battlefield, with objectives represented by settlements and each character and army representing a general leading a military formation, say a division, virtually unlimited sized set-piece battles can be created

The economy and recruitment does not need to be involved at all. The opposing sides start out with all the troops they would have had in that battle and campaign map merely becomes a turn-based strategy game on a larger scale for manoeuvring troops, and each battle map battle fought will represent a small part of the overall conflict.

Using this method, historical battles can be represented on a 1:1 scale. If a historical battle had 100,000 men, then the battle can be played with control over the parts of your whole army which would be able to total 100,000 men overall. The campaign map is like a chessboard to manage each division, and the actualy real time battles will be just a part of the big picture.


So what do you guys think?

[Vladyvid]

The largest battle I played in a campaign was with crusades surrounding a city that I was capturing. There were 6 allied crusader armies, one my army and the enemy army inside the city. Total number of soldiers was around 15-16 thousand and it was a torture for my pc.

With 100 thousand soldiers I dont think my pc would manage it. Also I don't know how possibly could you get 100 thousand soldiers in one battle, even considering usage of many army stacks. I think it would have to do a lot of with AI and how it controlls their forces. Coordinating AI with player forces would be the biggest problem. Perhaps the AI could be modified but not sure.

[kingtigertank]

The largest battle I played in a campaign was with crusades surrounding a city that I was capturing. There were 6 allied crusader armies, one my army and the enemy army inside the city. Total number of soldiers was around 15-16 thousand and it was a torture for my pc.

With 100 thousand soldiers I dont think my pc would manage it. Also I don't know how possibly could you get 100 thousand soldiers in one battle, even considering usage of many army stacks. I think it would have to do a lot of with AI and how it controlls their forces. Coordinating AI with player forces would be the biggest problem. Perhaps the AI could be modified but not sure.

I'm not talking about a single battle on the battle map containing 100,000 soldiers, but 100,000 soldiers spread out across several armies on the campaign map, so you get to control that many soldiers overall on a strategic level, since you can't control that many on a tactical level in just a single battle on the battle map as you mention. The campaign map is like a chessboard to move the parts of your 100,000 strong army around.

P.S. Edited OP to make it more clear.

[Vladyvid]

It could work, a small campaign with no building or recruitment, only several strategic locations and war.

[dmcraanen]

I suppose it could work, but I am sceptical. For example, you'd need some 50-60 ''objectives'' to make a decent map....! What battles were you thinking of?

[kingtigertank]

Battles such as Crecy and Grunwald are good canditates, and any other battles that involve significantly large amount of troops. Smaller battles are easy enough for just a conventional M2TW historical battle to represent, but the larger battles, which single M2TW battle map battle can only represent in a small scale, are all prime canditates for representation in the method I have described.

[dmcraanen]

Well you could definately give it a try! Essentially what you are aiming at sounds like a mini-campaign which could be an excellent addition to some mods out here. I'm keeping my eye on it

[atheniandp]

Excellent idea! There was an idea in the RTW mod forums to replace each single (sprite) unit with a square of units. Which looked and sounded great in theory but nobody pursued it.

The idea of representing one battlefield in a minature campaign is interesting, though. But it would have to be a very small map, otherwise each division of the collective army will just look and feel like a separate entity. This idea would work particularly well for a WW1 mod.

[Meelis13]

i support this idea, but ONLY if it will be modified so, that you can select ammount of your and AI's armies, so that you can get as many stacks into battle as you want AND/OR how capable your PC is. really excellent idea. i would really want to play Battle of Ancincourt full scale for example. and why not to convert even battles like Battle of Muhi in 1241 between Mongols and Hungarians. To refresh the memory, this was the battle in wich mongols destroyed hungarian army. only pure chance saved Europe after that from mongols (really underestimated trheat in my opinion)

[Gigantus]

Anybody asked the AI yet what he thinks of it?

The minimum set up would be two settlements and two factions. The theoretical minimum map size would be 3*6 pixels, but somehow I doubt it would be stable. Considering that a full stack has a maximum of 5000 men, you are talking about a serious amount of stacks given that want 100.000 men. Unless you want to set them up like on a chessboard you would probably have to go for a map about 25*25 in size.
Never heard anyone trying to go that small.

[ggggtotalwarrior]

this is a great idea. And Gigantus, you of all people should know about beating the AI's limits when creating a mod. You're pretty much the God of MedII modding. And KingTigerTank how goes the Hidden Flame mod? you've been gone from TWC for awhile and I haven't seen news on it in months.

[kingtigertank]

this is a great idea. And Gigantus, you of all people should know about beating the AI's limits when creating a mod. You're pretty much the God of MedII modding. And KingTigerTank how goes the Hidden Flame mod? you've been gone from TWC for awhile and I haven't seen news on it in months.

We will post our long-term plans for Hidden Flame on its thread soon. We've been absent from TWC for a while simply because we've been super busy with real life stuff.

Anybody asked the AI yet what he thinks of it?

The minimum set up would be two settlements and two factions. The theoretical minimum map size would be 3*6 pixels, but somehow I doubt it would be stable. Considering that a full stack has a maximum of 5000 men, you are talking about a serious amount of stacks given that want 100.000 men. Unless you want to set them up like on a chessboard you would probably have to go for a map about 25*25 in size.
Never heard anyone trying to go that small.

100,000 men is just an example of perhaps what could be achieved. Most medieval historical battles didn't reach that number and thus would not need to be represented in quite such a large sum, with total numbers on both sides for most battles probably ranging from around 15,000 to 50,000. The idea is just that if we wanted to go bigger, we probably can.

I don't really think the campaign AI will have too much problem with managing the stacks, I've only ever viewed the battle AI as a problem. However, fighting large amounts of stacks of AI troops should still prove challenging, as many of us probably experienced fighting Mongol and Mordor hordes in our past TW gameplay.


I am visualising a map where it will be a conscious choice for the player to either mass his stacks close together so as to get reinforcements in the battle map, or to spread them out to gain more range. Since the M2TW armies only have a field of influence of 1 pixel around them i think, the map should still be able to be kept quite small.