Battle Casualties and Decisiveness

[DarthRuanek]

From what I know, Total War games generally don't reflect casualties in a realistic manner. Most troops either die or survive the battle, and there isn't much middle ground. In real life, battles that entirely wipe out an enemy force were rare, because the losing side would retreat and/or disperse and it wasn't as easy to run down retreating enemies in real life as it is in total war games (in real life, battles take hours, or days, and it's tiring to run after someone).

I know that this is a hard thing to implement in a video game. We don't want long, drawn out battles, and we don't want to keep repeating the same fight until the enemy is finally totally defeated.

But is it really good to make battles even more decisive? That's apparently one of the goals for R2TW. But it's not as historically accurate and a lot of players, especially the less casual ones, may not prefer it.

[Ichon]

It might help quite a bit if retreats were better and truly eliminating enemy army required 2nd battle so cavalry would have to be separated. Of course part of the issue is survivors of horrific loss in TW game fight the next battle with full morale. That should only happen if commander survived the battle and then still require an awesome general otherwise morale takes a full turn to recover to max but will gain between half/quarter IE start at wavering so only cavalry pursuit has a chance but too far pursuit into enemy land or against army whose general survived first battle is big risk so sometimes enemies can escape, it is more likely in their own lands too which makes sense.

[Emperor Hantscher]

I would personally love it if they add a feature where after the battle, when they show the battle results, they Have "Soldiers Killed", "Soldiers Wounded", "Soldiers Survived". It always bugged me that soldiers either died or lived. The wounded soldiers could be as simple as your army losess that amount of soldiers after the battle but over a certain number of turns the units would replenish with out charge. You can go more in depth with it too, like be able to "stockpile" wounded soldiers then add them to depleted units of your choice or if you have enough, form new units, free of charge of course.

I don't really care if there are any battle animations for wounded soldiers, I know thats alot to ask, But maybe when you put your camera over a pile of dead soldiers you would hear some groaning of wounded soldiers.

If they want battles to be fewer but more desisive I say, keep it kinda the same but add a feature of pre-battle negotiations, it would be just like the diplomacy screen but it would be before any battle and the terms that the enemy would accept or not is based on the strength differtence between your two armys and of course the demands. You could do things like pay the enemy to walk off the battlefield, bribe them into sparing their lives, demand surrender, spare the army for the life of it's general or whatever else. That way you won't always have to either fight or auto resolve those guaranteed wins, like when your marching a full stack and some 4 unit army tries to stop you. Of course the larger army would be the one offering the terms and should the player be outnumbered it offers an extra challenge in trying to find the balance between being a good strategist and being a coward. The negotions could also have an impact on your relations with that nation, and the traits of your general aswell. should be obvious that traits would have a huge impact on whether they will be accepted or not.

Just some food for thought.

[DarthRuanek]

If they want battles to be fewer but more desisive I say, keep it kinda the same but add a feature of pre-battle negotiations, it would be just like the diplomacy screen but it would be before any battle and the terms that the enemy would accept or not is based on the strength differtence between your two armys and of course the demands. You could do things like pay the enemy to walk off the battlefield, bribe them into sparing their lives, demand surrender, spare the army for the life of it's general or whatever else. That way you won't always have to either fight or auto resolve those guaranteed wins, like when your marching a full stack and some 4 unit army tries to stop you. Of course the larger army would be the one offering the terms and should the player be outnumbered it offers an extra challenge in trying to find the balance between being a good strategist and being a coward. The negotions could also have an impact on your relations with that nation, and the traits of your general aswell. should be obvious that traits would have a huge impact on whether they will be accepted or not.

Just some food for thought.

Yeah, pre-battle negotiations have a lot of potential. Being able to demand the surrender of an enemy army you clearly could beat would remove a lot of tedious battles, and being able to negotiate passage/life of a general/bribery/etc. would add a lot as well.

[Ichon]

I like refill each turn but maybe to represent wounded the first turn after a battle all armies units get fast refill even in slow or 0 regions to represent wounded returning to service or a turn of fast, the moderate then whatever the region would normally be. Even better if there were cutter/bone setter ancillaries and if using less movement the turn after a battle helped speed recovery.

[Matchlock Chariot]

I think pre-battle negotiations could be a marvelous feature...
Unfortunately it will not work unless CAI/Diplomacy gets a MAJOR overhaul.

Until then any such negotiations might end up looking like this:
(A Carthaginian full-stack army and a single unit of Town Watch meet on the field.)

Carthaginian General: We will give you a ton of Denarii to disband and leave peaceably; no one has to die here today.

Town Watch unit: Bah! Your bantering of empty words only shows that you are weak and cannot handle the cost of war! Your proposals are rejected utterly!

Carthaginian General: it bring out the Armored Elephants!

[Maklodes]

One thing that might help would be if there were something where people that were either surrounded or were slower than significant forces their enemies had in reserve might surrender instead of routing. Of course, you could also just kill everyone who surrenders, too, but that makes them less inclined to do so in the future and more inclined to fight to the bitter end if routing isn't possible.

I realize that's really more in the direction of "fewer battles in which 95% of soldiers on one side get killed" than "more battles in which both armies are somewhat intact after the battle," though.

[Shocked]

I hate having to re do battles just to run down a small amount of troops, if a significant amount retreated it'd be fine though.

[akkakk]

From what I know, Total War games generally don't reflect casualties in a realistic manner. Most troops either die or survive the battle, and there isn't much middle ground. In real life, battles that entirely wipe out an enemy force were rare, because the losing side would retreat and/or disperse and it wasn't as easy to run down retreating enemies in real life as it is in total war games (in real life, battles take hours, or days, and it's tiring to run after someone).

I know that this is a hard thing to implement in a video game. We don't want long, drawn out battles, and we don't want to keep repeating the same fight until the enemy is finally totally defeated.

But is it really good to make battles even more decisive? That's apparently one of the goals for R2TW. But it's not as historically accurate and a lot of players, especially the less casual ones, may not prefer it.

In one battle, i think it was Cannae, the Romans lost 70,000 men in a single battle (dead mostly, with many wounded). Many of them died fighting.

Battles in the ancient period could claim the lives of thousands in the melee alone, and when one side breaks, many thousands more could be run down and killed or captured and enslaved.

And i think the previous TW games did actually model wounded, but they werent called 'wounded'.

it was the number of troops 'healed' after the battle, which i usually assumed was the soldiers who just had minor wounds or were just knocked out were returned to duty.

[Ultra123]

true i always assumed that was the wounded feature. you can see it by clicking on the little battle stats scroll after a battle and you see the 'clear victory' screen.

[Baltizar]

What I would like to see on the Battle maps are points that you have to control for a period of time to win a battle similar to what they had previously when capturing a town.

[Rasic]

What I would like to see on the Battle maps are points that you have to control for a period of time to win a battle similar to what they had previously when capturing a town.

What do you mean by "points"? Like dojos or terrain features? Either way I wouldn't want to see that style make it into regular pitched field battles.

[akkakk]

What I would like to see on the Battle maps are points that you have to control for a period of time to win a battle similar to what they had previously when capturing a town.

No.
No.
No.
A thousand times NO!
An INFINITE AMOUNT OF TIMES NO!


at most, have the plaza in cities as a capture point like Rome/Med 2 and THATS IT.

we dont want your pantsy multiplayer-esque capture points. if you want them play multiplayer, dont poison single player with your rubbish.

[DarthRuanek]

I think pre-battle negotiations could be a marvelous feature...
Unfortunately it will not work unless CAI/Diplomacy gets a MAJOR overhaul.

Until then any such negotiations might end up looking like this:
(A Carthaginian full-stack army and a single unit of Town Watch meet on the field.)

Carthaginian General: We will give you a ton of Denarii to disband and leave peaceably; no one has to die here today.

Town Watch unit: Bah! Your bantering of empty words only shows that you are weak and cannot handle the cost of war! Your proposals are rejected utterly!

Carthaginian General: it bring out the Armored Elephants!

I think they've already said something about pre-battle negotiations. So it could be in there.

I will say, though, that diplomacy can always be improved. Yesterday I was playing RTW, and I trying to buy map information from Thrace. Every time I asked, they would counteroffer with more money and an alliance. I'd offer 1500 for it, and they'd then offer 1500 to me for 3 turns, along with map info, for an alliance. It was ridiculous that they would never just give it to me individually. I think it has gotten better in later TW games, though.

In one battle, i think it was Cannae, the Romans lost 70,000 men in a single battle (dead mostly, with many wounded). Many of them died fighting.

Battles in the ancient period could claim the lives of thousands in the melee alone, and when one side breaks, many thousands more could be run down and killed or captured and enslaved.

And i think the previous TW games did actually model wounded, but they werent called 'wounded'.

it was the number of troops 'healed' after the battle, which i usually assumed was the soldiers who just had minor wounds or were just knocked out were returned to duty.

There were battles like that, but there were also battles that weren't as decisive. And TW games don't really represent those.

Yeah, I always assumed healed casualties represented wounded soldiers. But it was generally a negligible amount of soldiers healed. "Yeah, I lost 500 men in that battle. 15 of them I ended up getting back." That sort of thing. It still wasn't realistic.

No.
No.
No.
A thousand times NO!
An INFINITE AMOUNT OF TIMES NO!


at most, have the plaza in cities as a capture point like Rome/Med 2 and THATS IT.

we dont want your pantsy multiplayer-esque capture points. if you want them play multiplayer, dont poison single player with your rubbish.

Ok, we get that you don't like it. But you didn't say why.