Multiplayer campaign

[sasquatch32794]

I think it would be cool if Rome 2 allowed more than two players to play a multiplayer campaign. They could streamline the process by not requiring all of the players to be logged into the campaign at the same time in order to play. The only players that would be needed to be logged into the campaign would be those that required direct action(ie the player whose turn it is or needed to do a battle). This would make large 10 plus multiplayer campaigns more feasible.

But what do you guys think that could help multiplayer campaign?

[sobchack]

Would be epic to have a mpc with every faction being human controlled

[ironbrigade]

I really hope for 4 player at least mp campaighn.

[Lord Dakier]

2 player is adequate I believe but 4 player would be perfect.

Thing is they need to allow co-op campaigns on the same game just using auto-resolve instead though or AI controlled armies for player vs player. I'd love to control two factions at the same time sometimes and be able to select or drop new ones.

[emotion_name]

I think adding to the amount of players is the next logical step in furthering the MPC experience. In recent interview CA employee (Mike Simpson i think) said CA were surprised at how many people actually played MPC so its safe to assume it will be included.

Now, if you think NTW (not counting ETW MPC coz it was Beta only) gave us "Play as AI" options so other player wasnt sat watching, bored and a few other things and S2TW added unit sharing, co-op mode etc and most importantly S2TW managed to get (eventually) a stable MPC that doesnt always CTD or desynch then i think the next "step" for R2TW MPC is to allow upto 4 players, as minimum.

Obviously if everyone had to be online at sametime then more than 4 could pose a problem, but i think with how big R2TW Map will be compared to S2TW then 4 person would be fine to put in and everyone have there "own space" to play and enjoy and not be sandwiched between humans, like what would happen in 4 player MPC on smaller map!

[myself]

The multiplayer campaign is a really great feature that needs to be kept in Rome 2. It is my contention that it is easily possible to improve it further by allowing 4 players to take part in a multiplayer campaign.
As I see it, the biggest problem with increasing the number of players is the time spent in battles. As of now, it is easily possible to limit the turn length to 2 minutes per player, which makes it quite possible to enjoy a full 4-player campaign. But no one wants to spend 20 to 40 minutes waiting for 2 players (or maybe only just one) to complete a battle. As auto-resolving every battle doesn't seem very interesting to me (I truly believe that it would kill the essence of the game itself), I think that we need to come up with something. That's where my idea appears: we should make a 2 vs 2 multiplayer campaign.

-During the other players' turn, each player should be able to manage not only construction but also to use diplomacy and to give movement orders and manage taxes. When it is the player's turn, your ordered movements should take place and you will probably not take too long to end your turn. This combined with a timer for the time length would ensure that the game runs quite smoothly.

-During battles, this is the real moment when the 2 vs 2 alliances are needed. Every time a battle occurs, it will involve the 4 players. The player attacking or defending will of course have control of his own troops and he will be able to give part of his troops to his ally, just like in the current coop multiplayer campaign. The IA controled troops will be given to both their enemies, like in Napoleon Total War's multilayer campaigns.

-There could be different sets of victory conditions: either there could be a prestige victory condition (based on marvels and important buildings for instance), a domination victory condition or even a diplomatic victory condition (if you have enough support among the IA-based factions). The first team achiving its victory condition would win (obviously).

I think this would allow for a challenging and intersting new multiplayer game-mode.

[Fanest]

i think that MPC for 4 is hard to ply because u have to be online all the time, thats why I think they should reintroduce hotseats . When u finish your turn savegame uploads to some place online and when next player starts the game he's notified that he has to ply his turn. Reloading would be disabled - if u fu.. up u f... up. If u dont finish your turn in time u are automatically skipped etc.... This is very simple thing to do and it would be great imo. Also there could be no limit to how many ppl ply this.

[stradar1]

i think that MPC for 4 is hard to ply because u have to be online all the time, thats why I think they should reintroduce hotseats . When u finish your turn savegame uploads to some place online and when next player starts the game he's notified that he has to ply his turn. Reloading would be disabled - if u fu.. up u f... up. If u dont finish your turn in time u are automatically skipped etc.... This is very simple thing to do and it would be great imo. Also there could be no limit to how many ppl ply this.

hotseat is really not the way to do this come on This is 2012 man!~

[myself]

Thanks for your answer Fanest. I agree that hotseats should be re-introduced as it was a great way to play in Medieval 2. I was quite disappointed when Empire was released and it didn't have it any more and the multiplayer campaign wasn't implemented at the time of release of Empire. In Medieval 2, you could enjoy great games with as many people as you wished on just one computer. But Napoleon and Shogun 2's multiplayer campaigns are in my opinion even better as they allow you to play battles against a human opponent, which makes things a lot harder and more exciting. I've played many multiplayer campaigns in Shogun 2 and Napoleon and the wainting time is not such a problem, but then there are only two players. What plagued the MPC though was that there were plenty of bugs when it was first released and you had to reload a lot, it got better with time and I have high expectations for Rome 2.
Regarding the proposed 4-player MPC, I don't think that having the 4 players online at the same time would really be a problem if two conditions were met.

- Firstly, each player should be allowed to do much more things when it is not his turn to play: he should be able to deal with diplomacy, to give movement orders and to manage his family. That added with a turn length of maximum let's say 1 or 2 minutes allows you not to have to wait too long for your turn to play.

-Secondly, whenever there is a battle, like I explained in my previous post, the four players take part in it, so there is no waitning time at all.

On the whole, I think that if you want to autoresolve battles between human players, then hotseat is the best way to go. On the other hand, if you want to play every battle against your human foes, then I think that the 2vs2 MPC is a elegant way to allow epic battles and an epic campaign. And both modes should be included as different players have different tastes.

[emotion_name]

Whilst i agree MPC needs to be pushed further, and increasing total number of players is the first logical step of this, i have to disagree with your idea of implementation.

As im sure your aware, the second player on MPC can already queue buildings and units, they cannot however do diplomacy or move units/agents - this should stay how it is otherwise where is the "turn based" gameplay?

When it comes to battles, just like now why not let the players choose for themselves. If one player wants to fight as AI, one wants to help his friend and one wants to spectate coz he is going to make a coffee, why not allow this? If im attacking the AI and i choose to gift units to another player, simply give me the option of which player i gift them to. Through this way i could gift Cav to player 2, archers to player 3 whilst i take my infantry and player 4 wanted to play as AI, for example. In this way everyone gets to choose what they want to do.

As for "how long battles will take", its quite simple im afraid - either accept the fact a 4 player MPC will take longer or stick to 2 player MPC.

You could also "merge" Fanests idea (hi fanest btw, dont see you on here too often ) into the MPC set-up using steam cloud for saves. Imagine none of my 3 other players are online, but its my turn and i wanna play - i should be able to load it up, play my turn and when i press end turn the save file for next player is saved in steam cloud, when they come online they have notification and they then load it up (if other players are online now, great, but if not he can still load up his turn and play).

When a human faction attacks another human faction, steam cloud holds the quick save until both players are online to fight the battle.

In this way, a 4 player MPC wouldnt take that long as it can continue at the pace of a single player, not always having to wait for all 4 players to be online and loaded in.

[myself]

I kinda like your ideas emotion_names. They are quite interesting and would push the MPC one step further.

As im sure your aware, the second player on MPC can already queue buildings and units, they cannot however do diplomacy or move units/agents - this should stay how it is otherwise where is the "turn based" gameplay?

I am aware of this and now that you're talking about diplomacy, I actually realize that I wouldn't want that the player ,whose turn it is not to play, to be able to deal with it as it would obviously kill the turn-based philosophy of the campaign. But I think that it would be great to give movement orders even when it is not your turn. What I mean is that those movements would not be happening while you order them but only when it is your turn to play. It would be like queuing buildings and units.

When it comes to battles, just like now why not let the players choose for themselves. If one player wants to fight as AI, one wants to help his friend and one wants to spectate coz he is going to make a coffee, why not allow this? If im attacking the AI and i choose to gift units to another player, simply give me the option of which player i gift them to. Through this way i could gift Cav to player 2, archers to player 3 whilst i take my infantry and player 4 wanted to play as AI, for example. In this way everyone gets to choose what they want to do.

I can definitely see this happening. It would be so great. I imagine that before every battle there could be a selection screen and every one would be able to select what he wants to do. Of course if a player has one of his armies engaged in the battle, he would have to control it but all the other players could choose either to control part of the AI's troops, or to assist the human player or even to spectate the game while having a cup of tea! This would also be great as it would allow for more than 4-players MPCs. It would be total freedom!

As for "how long battles will take", its quite simple im afraid - either accept the fact a 4 player MPC will take longer or stick to 2 player MPC.

Yes, I know. I don't mind spending days to finish a 4-player MPC and I realize it will take more than twice the time of a 2-player MPC but if it's possible to minimize the time spent doing nothing, it's even better. And your ideas help find creative ways to do just that, so thank you for your answer.

You could also "merge" Fanests idea (hi fanest btw, dont see you on here too often ) into the MPC set-up using steam cloud for saves. Imagine none of my 3 other players are online, but its my turn and i wanna play - i should be able to load it up, play my turn and when i press end turn the save file for next player is saved in steam cloud, when they come online they have notification and they then load it up (if other players are online now, great, but if not he can still load up his turn and play).

When a human faction attacks another human faction, steam cloud holds the quick save until both players are online to fight the battle.

Yes, this idea is awesome. But it absoluty needs to hold the quick save before a battle involving two human players. I would hate to load my game and see that one of my armies has disappeared.
Thanks for your input, I really appreciated what you proposed and now I am even more conviced than before that a more-than-2-player-MPC is possible.

[emotion_name]

Ahhh, so on movement you mean simply click where you want them to go - you get the red arrow showing there movement but until the end of your turn they wont actually walk anywhere? (unless of course you move them DURING your turn)? This could defo shave some time of total turn time.

One thing i do think they need to do is give the option to take back gifted units - imagine you are planning to attack player one, but before you do he goes into a battle and gifts you a few units - as you know its in your best interests if he loses, you refuses to engage with his units or withdraw them causing him to lose his army/region/etc. The option to take back gifted units would solve this problem.

They could also add (be more use in MPC than Singleplayer) the ability to turn on your allies DURING BATTLES. Imagine you are Gaul, another player is Germannic tribes and i am Romans, and we have an alliance. We both send a stack to attack the same Germanic stack, and as your my ally you join as reinforcements and have full control of your army. Imagine beforehand you struck deal with Germanic tribes and during battle you ATTACK me, instantly becoming my enemy on campaign map and allied to the Germanic. Would add so much more intrigue and deception to MPC campaigns.

[myself]

Ahhh, so on movement you mean simply click where you want them to go - you get the red arrow showing there movement but until the end of your turn they wont actually walk anywhere? (unless of course you move them DURING your turn)? This could defo shave some time of total turn time.

Yes, that is what I meant. You would still get a notification if one of your units wasn't able to complete its movement. It would be like giving multiple-turns orders but while it is not your turn to play.

I also think that the ability to take back gifted unit should be implemented. I had actually thought of this before but I didn't write it as it didn't fit the 2vs2 MPC concept that I had at the time. But with an unretricted diplomacy (and so unrestricted number of players as well), which you suggested, this becomes a much wanted feature. Turning on your allies during a battle would then be another feature that would really add flavour to this. I can really imagine how it would bring diplomacy to a higher level of complexity and enjoyment. Deception and back-stabbing would always be possible threats.

EDIT: I changed the topic name to "More than 2 players MPC" as I was explained why the "2vs2 MPC" was not the best way to go. There are better and more general suggestions to implement a MPC in this thread.

[emotion_name]

All we have to hope is the CA is watching, and maybe agreeing!

I know in a recent interview they stated how surprised they were at the amount of people who play MPC, maybe they thought it would be a "niche" gamemode and were caught unawares at how popular it actually is - hopefully this sort of recognisation means they are indeed planning big things for R2TW MPC.

I wont lie, if R2TW ships with MPC the same as it is now, in S2TW, i will be very dissapointed. Thats not to say MPC is bad, far from it, but i think so much more could be done with it!

[myself]

Yeah, let's hope that CA works really hard on this part of the game, and gets us some real addicting MPC. I wasn't too much into feudal Japan but I bought Shogun2 because of the improved MPC and I must say that it was really worth it (well there were bugs but I suppose it will get better with Rome2). Anyway, they are on the right track and need to continue improving themselves. It is within their reach to provide us with an awesome, almost bug-free MPC (with most of the features discussed in this thread if possible).

[DeliCiousTZM]

Something ive been advocating actively since Napoleon. Once we step out of 2 player multiplayer campaign and into a simultaneous turn 3 way 4 player campaign this game will explode.

[LarryMorrio]

I agree that hotseats should be re-introduced as it was a great way to play in Medieval 2.

[myself]

Hotseats are nice in the sense that they allow several players to play on the same computer. They have a major flaw though, they don't allow you to play batlles involving two or more human players. So, I think that while hotseat is a nice feature to have, the multiplayer campaign is even better as it will allow epic battles against your human foes. But if you think of it, hotseat can kind of be included in the MPC. If there is an option that allows you to auto-resolve every battle involving 2+ human players, then if you add Fanest's idea of "When u finish your turn savegame uploads to some place online and when next player starts the game he's notified that he has to ply his turn", you have a totally working hotseat that is just part of the larger MPC.

To summarize,

A great MPC allowing for more than 2 players (at least 4 I hope) would have (most of) the following features:

-When it is not your turn to play, you can queue buildings and units. Moreover you can give movement commands. That is you tell your units where you want them to go - you get the red arrow showing their movement but until the end of your turn they wont actually walk anywhere. You cannot manage diplomacy or anything else.

-When it is your turn to play, you can obviously do anything that you want. The movement commands that you had given when it was not your turn to play occur at the beginning of your turn. Your turn is the only moment when you can manage diplomacy.

-At the beginning of every battle, you would have many options. If one or more players have armies engaged in this battle, they control their armies. Every other player will be given a choice. He can either spectate, take control of part of the AI's troops or assist one of the human players. The AI's troops will be divided between all the people choosing to control the AI's forces. If they all chose to spectate, then the AI will control its troops.

-During a battle, each player can gift units to one of the players that chose to assist him, but there needs to be an option to take back gifted units in case the guy that you gift units to decides to backstab you. Still concerning backstabbing, you should be able to turn on your allies during battles. Imagine you are Gaul, another player is Germannic tribes and i am Romans, and we have an alliance. We both send a stack to attack the same Germanic stack, and as your my ally you join as reinforcements and have full control of your army. Imagine beforehand you struck deal with Germanic tribes and during battle you ATTACK me, instantly becoming my enemy on campaign map and allied to the Germanic. It would add so much more intrigue and deception to MPC campaigns.

-Not all players should need to be connected at the same time. When you finish your turn savegame uploads to some place online (steam cloud for instance) and the next player is notified that he has to play is turn. Reloading would of course be disabled. Furthermore, when a human faction attacks another human faction, steam cloud holds the quick save until both players are online to fight the battle and all human players involved in the batttle would be notified that they have to play a battle. Imagine none of my 3 other players are online, but its my turn and i wanna play - i should be able to load it up, play my turn and then either I launch a battle involving 2+ human players and the game waits for the players to connect or I don't, finish my turn and
I press end turn to save file for next player on steam cloud. When they come online they have notification and then they load it up (if other players are online now, great, but if not he can still load up his turn and play).

-There should be an option to allow to auto-resolve every battle involving 2+ human players, so that it is possible to play hotseat for those who want it. (But this should not be a defaut option, I personally would never use it for instance but I can understand that some people could want it). Diplomacy between human players would be disabled when this option is ticked as it is mainly designed to allow to play hotseat.

-They should keep the turn length timer with different options (1, 2 or 5 minutes). Unlimited turn length sould stay an option though. The turn length would of course not involve battle time. It should stay as it is right now in Shogun 2 actually.

Credit to emotion_name (mostly) and Fanest for most of the ideas in this post and even some of the text (I re-used it as I'm no native speaker and I wanted this post to be as intelligible as possible).

[emotion_name]

Some more ideas to add "flavour" to the MPC area of Total War! (Some of these could obviously be applied to singleplayer also)

So first off, how about letting the players set "Caps" for certain things, to force a change of play/styles - after you have played 3 or 4 MPC with same person you will understand the need for this. Things like agents for example, in FotS i can cripple my friends economy, armies and any advances he makes against me with masses of OP agents - the only limiter here is having the funds to pay for actions. Sure, he can counter this by doing the same, but then your MPC degenerates into 30 or 40 turns of nothing but agent and counter agent actions. If we could set beforehand that only 2 Shinobi, 1 Geisha, 1 Foreign Vet + 1 Shisengumi/Ishin Shishi can be recruited at any one time (as example, again using FotS as its familier and we know not what agents R2TW will bring) it could stop this, forcing the players to play differently. Obviously the other benefits of the buildings they come from would not be effected, things like Growth/Wealth/Repression etc. You could also have the option for "cooldown" on recruitment of agents - so if you hit the allowed quota and then an agent gets executed/caught you have to wait a set number of turns before you can replace him. This would also go someway to help add "bonds" to your agents, instead of the throw away nature i find most people have for them in S2TW and expansions, now you would actually care if your Rank 5 Ninja fails his mission and dies!!

Then there is starting positions - why not have it so there is a few options for how you start a campaign? Things like standard (how the game starts in singleplayer), balanced MP (all factions start with one province, neutral to all clans), Aggressive (map is split between all human players only with no AI at all to force human v human action early on), King of the World (one pre selected human player starts much bigger than everyone else, but he starts at war with all AI clans and cannot negotiate peace with them - only shrewd player to player diplomacy and alliances can keep him on top). Obviously some of these could bugger balance up if not done properly, but it would add variety and as we know, variety is the spice of life!

Then there is starting date - as well as letting us select our starting position (to some extent) why not let us choose the start date for our campaigns, a bit like M2TW with the early, late, high units/buildings etc. This would allow campaigns to start where the best units are available to every faction from very first turn, adding something different to the usual "tech race".

Then there is victory conditions, and i think a straight destruction of other human players is a little to "bland" for the Roman Era. Other TW titles have touched on different Vic Conditions, like prestige and such like and i think adding something other than "kill everyone else to win" would make MPC so much better. Then you could also have "combined Vic Conditions" where 2 human players (in a 4 person MPC) can set an alliance, set terms of alliance and the game gives harder Vic Conditions for these 2 Allies. Should one of the factions break the alliance, they are prevented from entering another "combined Vic Condition" situation for the rest of the campaign, and could suffer harsher penalties also to trade/growth/diplomatic standing etc.

I will post a few more suggestions i think could greatly improve MPC soon, but for now what do you guys think of these? How could they be tweaked/refined to make MPC a truly awesome, unique, unforgetabble experience?

(also, might be worth someone sending PM to Craig/Jack/Chivalry or any other CA Rep here to point them in the direction of this thread, never know guys, in some shape or form our ideas could be implemented)

[myself]

I think that limiting the number of agents or simply limiting their effectiveness would be a good option for the MPC, as sometimes, you just want to avoid the agent confrontation and just want to have your fate decided by massive battles and not by a random toss of dice. Of course a decisive assassination or blocking an army can be totally delightful at times, but if it becomes the common strategy, it's no longer fun...

Different victory conditions could be great actually, allowing for more variety in the game. It would be nice to see a prestige victory back in the game.

Different starting dates are nice as well, as they allow to have a different set of units in the beginning of the game and a different challenge as well.

But I'm not quite convinced by the different starting position options. If I am Rome and it is 50 BC, I don't want Rome to be limited to a single province. It should already be a huge empire facing many different threats (kind of the King of the World style that you described). I think that having different starting dates is enough to give the opportunity to pick your challenge. If you want to start small and have a well balanced map, then choose the earliest starting date and choose your factions accordingly. You want a huge empire, then select a big empire and face a coalition of other human players. If you want to face human players from the beginning, decide that all players will choose factions close to each other. That way, you can really customize your MPC without having something that is too historically inaccurate. I know that historical accuracy is not the most important thing but it kind of is part of the CA touch that I like with Total War.

EDIT: I sent a PM :-)