the use of terrain

[atila9000]

in many battles, forests were avoided, or even used as flanking protection (an example is buodicca´s final battle against rome, in which the romans used the woods to protect their lanks).
in a total war battle, taht would very difficult to do, but we could have the regiments breaking formations (not routing) when they are walking through forests due to trees, bushes and roots, as well as lowering their speed. any other ideas?

[AngryTitusPullo]

Yes. Forest should give advantage to gallic/celtic factions and serious disadvantage to factions that uses formations like greeks and roman.

However the most important thing is that height should play a major faction. Hope the will re-introduce bonuses when charging down the hill, archers/slingers have greater ranger when on higher terrain. Armor level affecting movement bonuses and so on.

[atila9000]

also, when civilised factions (rome and greeks) go through them, they could have a morale penalty, because of the soldiers are scared of being ambushed, taking in account its intensity depending against who they are fighting with. for example, if romans are in woods, against greeks, romans pretty small penalty. rome against carthage, medium penalty. rome against germans, high penalty.
and the other way around, gauls against rome, high boost, carthage against greeks, med boost, greeks against rome, (well depends on who is on the forest)

[oppaiO_O]

it all sounds awesome though i dislike having to zoom in to a unit to see whats in front of them because the forest is blocking my view of my unit and the enemy though it adds realism and they're fun so i din't see why they shouldn't and also i read a CA interview and they are making better battle map terrains to be different so i think this is already on the game XD

[tone]

it all sounds awesome though i dislike having to zoom in to a unit to see whats in front of them because the forest is blocking my view of my unit and the enemy though it adds realism and they're fun so i din't see why they shouldn't and also i read a CA interview and they are making better battle map terrains to be different so i think this is already on the game XD

I think if they make forests realistic with higher tree canopies like this (from RS2), then you get both the immersion and the ability to see what's going on with your units:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Jester]

It s not that these barbarian dudes were some monkey-men who got superhuman strength when fighting in the forest tho

there re some famous examples in the history like the Varus battle, but his defeat had actually more to do with simple betrayal and because he made some mistakes

the romans were also masters at using the environment to their advantage... or if it wasnt they just altered it to their advantage.
they defeated the gauls and won many battles in germania.

it s just the question who is prepared and who is the one to be ambushed, not who gets +1 on damage just because he s fighting next to a tree

in TW it should be the same way. If you re playing smart and lure your enemy into an ambush then you should deserve some bonus, but not just because you re using a certain faction.

if it were like that and i was playing the romans i d just refuse to move my troops into the woods lol
i mean, why should i run into my certain death

[Thefallenhun]

They plan on having multiplayer, so I wouldn't expect the archer range bonus to come back. If it did it would just be 2 people sitting on the battlefield going "come here!" "no YOU come here"

[atila9000]

i think that zooming in wont be a problem for a total war, except from Rome 1. those forests were higher that the empire state, and taht was worst than a dense fog. shogun 2 and napoleon trees were "regular trees", you still have to zoom in, but still having a good overview of the battlemap

[Ichon]

Speed and breaking up formation should be important modifiers for different terrains as well that finally deep forest give protection from missiles.

Also please some new terrain than simple- flat, woods, hill which might be sand, grass, or snow covered. Give us some small streams, marshes, rough rocky, brush, rivers, etc. We know beach is in due to the sea assaults but will we be able to fight a battle on campaign map with no ships near close to a beach?

[atila9000]

also, to make battles more funnier, adding buildings near the center of the map, not on the far side of the map

[krisslanza]

I do think terrain does most of this already, it's just not immediately evident. At the very least it feels like Roman units in RTW do far worse in a forest when they get their neat formations all broken up and Gaul Swordsmen rip through them like butter.

Then again, those were just hastati...

And for archers while higher elevation doesn't give a range bonus, I'm fairly certain it either gives an accuracy bonus, or firing up at them is an accuracy penalty. This is why archers on walls tend to rack up serious kills compared to ones shooting up at them.

[atila9000]

i think this is very important on how a battle starts.
some armies were kind of ambushed when an enemy army appeared right behind them. in the campaign map, we could add something like this. your army is facing north, an the enemy attacks you from south. on the battle map, you will have no time to prepare a deployment, but the enemy will have a deployment phase. its a mix between an ambush and a regular battle. the attacker deploys regularly behind the enemy, the attacked doesnt have time to deploy their units and must turn back to face the enemy. do you like it?

[Ultra123]

i think this is very important on how a battle starts.
some armies were kind of ambushed when an enemy army appeared right behind them. in the campaign map, we could add something like this. your army is facing north, an the enemy attacks you from south. on the battle map, you will have no time to prepare a deployment, but the enemy will have a deployment phase. its a mix between an ambush and a regular battle. the attacker deploys regularly behind the enemy, the attacked doesnt have time to deploy their units and must turn back to face the enemy. do you like it?

that wouldnt work due to campaign map limitations. how on earth are you going to 'turn' your armies after each time you move them? doesnt make sense to me im afraid.

and trees were totally avoided with all factions in all tw games for me, you simply cannot command your armies, its like incurring a major loss for the sake of 'playing picnic under the trees while the pink and green pyjama men come get us'

[driecken]

If it is a special unit in the woods gaining bonus for some historically based reason OK...

But professionally trained, high spirited, well equipped units penalized for fighting in the woods? hmm..

I think at this point you don't penalize unless there is strategically some reason too, bonus for the party with special abilities/traits/characteristics OK, that I am fine with.

[Ichon]

If it is a special unit in the woods gaining bonus for some historically based reason OK...

But professionally trained, high spirited, well equipped units penalized for fighting in the woods? hmm..

I think at this point you don't penalize unless there is strategically some reason too, bonus for the party with special abilities/traits/characteristics OK, that I am fine with.

I am not sure if any further bonus need be applied to units which are normally gain strength from formation in woods other than the formation is broken up and for heavy infantry a small speed penalty.

If a Phalanx instead of presenting a front with 80 wide and 3 deep spears stabbing outward is broken into clumps of 10-20 and the rear ranks can't give support simply due to the trees, or as someone else suggest forced to use secondary weapon as the dense of the foliage prevents sarissa use that is enough of a penalty. On contrast Germans who don't benefit as much from formations wouldn't be getting a melee bonus in forests but they are able to take on Phalanx more on their terms and that is enough of a bonus.

Cavalry especially should move much slower in forests and any charges would be much weaker due to that as well as broken formation.

Skirmishers and lighter troops wouldn't get any speed penalty and since they do not rely on formations much at all they would be fighting more 1 on 1 and probably still lose against heavy infantry but not so dramatically as in an open field melee so could be used effectively in a forest battle as blocking troops which would be killed or routed quite quickly in an open field might stall heavy troops in forest long enough to isolate other parts of the enemy.

It does make more apparent talking about terrain how hard it is to show actual tactics when every army has the same max unit cap. So Phalanx fighting Germans will be about the similar numbers when that hardly ever happened historically.

[Greve Af Göteborg]

Maybe give higher penalties to units based on unit cohesion (A phalanx unit will have higher cohesion than a gallic light infantry unit).
The same goes for cavalry. The penalties should be fatigue, movement speed reduction and perhaps some sort of formation penalty.

[atila9000]

about the ambush. i was thinking the teoteburg battle. after that battle, most roman armies tried to avoid forests.many romans started to be scared at germans. maybe in the gameplay, if you get massacred by an ambush, all population will know that and start fearing them, and going through woods.
i want if somebody tells me what do you think of the army being attacked from their rear

[krisslanza]

about the ambush. i was thinking the teoteburg battle. after that battle, most roman armies tried to avoid forests.many romans started to be scared at germans. maybe in the gameplay, if you get massacred by an ambush, all population will know that and start fearing them, and going through woods.
i want if somebody tells me what do you think of the army being attacked from their rear

On the world map it's assumed if you can see the army, so can your own army so they would move their forces before another army could march up to them. It's why ambushes only work in a forest.

[Greve Af Göteborg]

Maybe a morale decrease for your armies when fighting the faction that have massacred you in battle recently.

[Cinnamon the Hun]

Maybe units should be forced to use loose formation to fight in forests. And any long spear/polearm unit like lancers or phalanx should have to use a secondary weapon.