unit cohort/card system

[General Sultan V]

in the heat of battle, where armies clash, engage, slaughter eachother, Selecting whole units of men and telling them something to do and they all automatically respond instantly and do it is plain retarded. So I propose to CA they remove the old unit card system and Introduce a system maybe similar to that of American conquest fight back, you know Amidst battles cohesion would be lost, men would be busy killing eachother, we already have'n learnt anything from our past, watching entire cohorts of hundreds of men running around the streets and only streets of Cities was annoyingly stupid. Maybe you could select several individuals simultaneously like in RTS games after they lose their formations/cohesion, so that you can actually really move them more realistically and freely around instead of having a whole Gigantic cohort running around together through a whole battle, this option would also be great for sieges, take the siege of carthage for example, do you think both sides ran around the streets in blocks? no. it was a brutal deathmatch. the romans ran amok across the streets while the carthaganians did the same, you see a soldier there and a soldier there another one there, more cohorent blocks And I will be sick of the TW Games. maybe they could find something in the middle. idk

what surprises me is how people shout out about the small and tiny unimportant things like techtrees and whatever and ignore real life things. well, all I Have to say for you people, no offense but the TW games got too much into your minds and made you think of battles like this and everyone acted like robots, people a while ago whined when someone suggested "Hoplite testudos" (un-historical but not inaccurate) that ITS UNHISTORICAL OH GAWD NO YOU PICKED THAT UPFROM 300 SPARTANS GROW UP KIDS HISTORIY IS DIFFERENT

now god how annoying that was. hoplite "Testudos" maybe inaccurate but why impossible??? do you think People were robots or something? why do you think it that a soldier on the battlefield with a life on the line would not use his brain? this is Not TW or anything. this is war, and it should be depicted as it is, something more than unit cards and blocks of men keeping cohesion thruogh raging battles

[IGdood]

If you're a CA-paid forum gladiator then + rep for you. I will gladly watch you do battle with the other posters, if any, who are against your ideas.

But to your message, I'd like to see disorganization dependent on discipline, training, morale, etc.
Perhaps instead of Guard Mode on and off, we have several stances like in other RTS games. Aggressive, Defensive, Hold Ground, etc....

[General Sultan V]

I mean imagine a scene from a battlefield.... would an entire herd of 200+ Men pull straight out of a brutal shove-style Battle instantly and Run in a group coordinating perfect movements and attacks? no. especially for messy and incohseive battles like their depicted siege of carthage

it would also be realistic to remove the sense that only discipline means doing things. a group of germanic barbarians can form a sheild wall as much as greek hoplites with aspis shields... but thats only until blood is drawn and everyone cares about his life rather than doing what big master behind the screen clicking a mouse wants. the earlier TW games taught people to very much under-value human life... some random dud who calls himself "Heir of carthage" And his "Meat shield" Tactics or whatever... these kinds of things are spread. because those electron soldiers will instantly obey what you want them to do until they are routed.

[IGdood]

Yes, exactly.

Perhaps there is a battlefield "excitement" meter. The more your troops feel like they're winning, the less organized they become as they start thinking of looting and chasing people down instead of following orders.

Could open up new possibilities with upgrading individual unit officers, although that seems to be heading down the path of Dynasty Warriors.

[jaca42]

I agree with pretty much everything you have posted, but one or two things i would really like to see in total war would be a proper line of sight system in the battles and maybe a supply system in.
But hopefully they will also implement some if not all of your ideas.

[General Sultan V]

Well you also reminded me of the fact that every single soldier on the battlefield is somehow instantly aware when their leader dies and start routing, this also does'n make sense for many armies since most armies back than were relatively leaderless. infact even if an army modern enough to have one (such as roman/Epirote army at pyrrhic wars) lose their leader amidst a battle there should be a very sensible reason the news would spread, In heraclea the Romans mistook one of Pyrrhus' officers as being himself after they capture him, the news spread after the romans Displayed his armor around the battlefield. in TW games its as simple as losing a general immediately leads to routs and panic in the already fast paced battles

this is one of very many things that defy a TW-style game. it just cant make sense.

[cygnus_darkstar]

I'm afraid I have to disagree, Sultan V. At least if I'm reading you correctly, that is. Trained units will certainly gain a little bit of disorder in their formation under combat conditions but will in no way break up into a bunch of "mano-a-mano" duels with each man for himself. Also, Roman centuries at least had a very well developed and sophisticated system of horn calls to which the men were trained to respond. I think what might be causing problems for your interpretation is the odd (in my opinon) failure of the Total War series games to show the lower-ranking officers and NCOs that help keep a unit's discipline in combat. A warband of Germanic warriors can indeed form a shield wall as well (perhaps) as a unit of hoplites, but maintaining that wall in combat is a very different thing which requires training, discipline, and good lower-level commanders. This is something the Barbarian nations generally lacked (any sort of system of NCOs and tactical subunits), and that is the core difference between them and, say, Rome (who had the best developed system of subunits). It is absolutely true that a Roman century would maintain its structure of ranks in the field until disordered by combat. But, as I point out in my post on the "What would you like to see in Rome 2" thread, combat only lasts for a few minutes at a time before units pull back to rest and regroup. During that period the Roman/Greek/Carthaginian's will be pulling their men back into order. The Gauls will not, having likely lacked any lower-level order to begin with.

You are correct to point out the chaos and confusion of battle and there are definitely circumstances under which usually ordered armies would break up and operate individually. City fights were probably not one of them, though (except in the last, mopping up stage). Under conditions where you can be ambushed without warning from any direction, maintaining a formation that allows the century to meet a threat and have each man covered by two more (his neighbors) is as vital as ever. Once again, it is not some general half a mile back keeping the men in formation. It is the (invisible in Total War games) masses of lower-level NCO's and file-closers.

[cygnus_darkstar]

You're absolutely right that armies should not insta-rout when they're general dies, though.

[General Sultan V]

I am very well aware of roman Legionary system fighting style but does it make sense when you see it in Say, RTW? I know they would maintain this wall and all, but do you think it could reach a level where it would remotely reach a level similar to the actual brutality that can be atleast depicted in scenes like these?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbSa9ZvSMaQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RApqCXaFGbg


or even some of these battle depictions









did you know people themselves in awe when CA added "Wounded soldiers" To shogun 2 total war? Do you know how big a blow it was that they simply added people being wounded instead of dying like in the other games? what about a soldier coming to finish off the enemy? what about that? what about millions of other things that will never be included? I Feel stupid just saying "things being included". anything can happen and happens and happened in a battlefield.

[cygnus_darkstar]

I understand where you're coming from, Sultan, but adding that kind of detail would likely require in context-sensitive procedural AI for every soldier on the map. I don't know about you, but I don't have a supercomputer to run Rome II on. Any game like this is going to have to have some degree of abstraction, at least for another five or six Moore's Law cycles. And the time for programmers to catch up to being able to use such power.

[General Sultan V]

how about just removing the old cohort system than? Maybe only certain Troops would have the abillity to maintain cohesion In battle for a while but why would others? I'm not shooting for eyecandy stuff but The last few TW games have been retarded beyond imagine, ETW: Entire unit draw sword from pocket and put on end of musket when clicking the "Fix beyonnets" Button. entire unit lower arms and point them up strangely and then point them towards enemy and start fighting, whole unit of 50 men making simultaneous 180 degree turn and run like pragnent women despite life on line, adding to the fact that they all, all of them run like this, and at the same pace. on a group. until the finally cross the red line instead of sanely stopping in safe distance, in melee combat, there are just eye-candy combat and pussy fights, more dancing and less trying-to-kill-the-guy-who-is-trying-to kill you. throwing enemy across ground and waiting for him to get up instead of kill him. cavalryman killing soldier by stabbing air and than watching him fall down by making neck-snapping head movements to watch him fall down before finally moving to find another target, soldiers in back watching men killing other men in complete chill, not even bothering to get in and fight, but no, they instead watch, sometimes look around at the sky and admire how beautiful the sun is, another guy looks cuirously at his feet to see if his shoes are clean while some people right across are fighting to the death, this is TW logic. and at the very least the only thing they could do about it is remove the ETW/NTW/S2TW fighting formats and introduced a better/improvised M2TW fighting format

[cygnus_darkstar]

I agree that M2TW seemed to have more fluid fighting than ETW/NTW (don't have experience with S2TW). The big issue is that you have a couple of totally different army organization techniques in this period (ancient world). In the one used by the civilized peoples there are many different levels of carefully coordinated command down to units (for the Romans at least) only 80 men in size. In the one used by Gaul (for instance) the warlord calls up levies of warriors from each tribe which are of very irregular size/composition and are each led by a local chief. These are welded into a couple of huge chunks (wings+center, for example) under a few independent commanders who are given their orders and sent on their way. The problem is that Total War games do not simulate the whole chain of command. You might try Scourge of War: Gettysburg, in which you are just one commander of whatever sized unit you want to be (brigade, division, corps). You receive orders from higher command and tell your subordinates what to do by courier. This requires an amazing AI, though, and the graphics suffer hugely as a result. If the R2TW team wants to go about simulating a chain of command for armies I wish them all the luck in the world. It would be a total departure from the series to date, if an innovative one. I doubt they will, though.

[Destraex]

Its very hard to do what you ask. I understand where you are coming from. But it seems that you expect CA to guess that all ancient soldiers were taught to think independently and intelligently while acting in a group.

If anything ancient soldiers, at least the ones that were taught in a disciplined system would be severely punished for breaking formation to adapt a formation. I am talking "generally" here of course and there would have been exceptions to the rule.

On the other hand you have the barbarians that often relied on a single charge followed by individual combat. In these cases do you expect them to adapt during battle to form up like group trained soldiers?
Individually they will put shields up or even as a group before the charge. But once the first charge is in all bets are off. you have to wait until they have retreated\regrouped or been recalled to charge again.
We have not even seen this yet, let alone some magical new tactic training.

Perhaps a penchant for adaption could happen for generals with the skill between battles. But not on the field. New formations take time to implement. If sieges go for long enough this time around you will have time between turns to change tactics.

[cygnus_darkstar]

It a total war game you are not playing as the general, but as a synthesis of the whole chain of command. The result is that, since you can see everything from your godlike perch, your army (and that of the enemy; the AI has the same advantage) react to things far too swiftly and uniformly. If they wanted to make the player just the general, then the units would have to have far greater independent AI, and there would have to be intermediate command levels (cohort, then century) with little AI commanders. That's how games like Scourge of War do it. I don't think the CA team wants to spend that much time on such an innovation because a lot of people would be hugely turned off by not being able to micromanage their army. If you made it a feature that could be turned off, probably 90% of player-hours would be spent with it off even though it took an incredible amount of effort to make it work. I would actually laud them for sticking to what they know, in this instance.

[Minas Moth]

from the posts I read I can see and understand the reasons behind "complaints" about the system but there is much more to it then appears at the first glance.

in the ancient world, the cohesion and formation was paramount in any type of battle. Units that could maintain their formation and easily adapt and respond to changed battlefield circumstances were held as an elite force from Pillars of Hercules to India. The Greek city states were the first to grasp the significance of many men fighting as an single "body" or unit. the sacred band of Thebes was widely known as an elite fighting unit because of its discipline and Alexander managed to break them only with repeated attacks and only when they almost died out (correct me if I am wrong). hoplites were as successful because there was no individual there, no me, you or he. there was only an unit no matter how small or big it got. the smallest tactical unit in Roman army was cotubernium (an unit of 8 men that shared tent, pack mule and other stuff). anything under that number wasn't considered an unit. In the roman order of battle, decisive blows were handed to the enemy by cohorts, centuries, maniples etc. These are all units of 80 and more men. not some brave, or even trained individuals that acted on their own.

In the ancient world, you didn't left your unit no matter what. If what you suggest happened then units would be broken into in-efficient pieces that could be easily dispatched by even a smallest coordinated counterattack. furthermore, the unit in ancient world was your family (especially in roman warfare). the man next to you was your brother, a guy you could trust your life too. a guy who would use his shield to protect you and who would stab the enemy that attacks you at the first chance he got. That can only be achieved if you have trained, disciplined and organised unit forming a solid line facing the enemy. In case of sacking the cities: correct me if I am wrong, but no pillaging happened during the battle itself. Roman units/soldiers/armies (from the sources I came across) first dispatched of the enemy completely (house to house sweep of the enemy after the battle) and then pillaged the city.this went in a few phases: 1) destroy enemy's field army, 2) destroy his garrison, 3) destroy any left overs, 4) take what you can, where you can and how you can. I am sure I read somewhere that most of the roman commanders severely punished any man who didn't follow the discipline during the combat. you didn't left your unit when in battle, period. If you did, you betray not only your commander but also your brothers you served with.

I think that a system of "unit response" to the command is a good thing. that was something entire ancient world aspired to. when romans lost their cohesion in their units, empire started to crumble. they managed to adopt the phalanx style of greek cities, transform it to be useable by a man carrying a stabbing weapon (gladius) instead of a 3 metres long spear and still keep the benefits of the phalanx while increasing the mobility of such a unit. That cohesion and training was lost when the Empire fell. in the dark/middle ages, you didn't have a body of professional soldiers who could effectively fight as an unit. Knights, squires and other were individual warriors not a well oiled part of an invincible machine. The era which ETW represents, tried to recreate that fight as an unit doctrine. but, by then, the gunpowder weapons proved too much a psychological weapon that couldn't be bested by the training of that time. even so, British had proved that steady line of musketmen (3 ranks deep) when working as a cohesive unit could break any attack launched against them (Wellington's infantry at Waterloo).

all in all, there are worse things than unit of 80 men responding automatically to a command. also, this is a game, not a representation of history. if it were representation then the battles would be unplayable for a simple reason. In the ancient world, as long as one army didn't started to rout and turn its back to the enemy, casualties were fairly small. it was and still is, extremely hard to hit a man who has a large shield in front of him strong enough or accurate enough to kill him. so in theory, for as long as your army could keep its cohesion and line it would be invincible and would suffer only smaller casualties. in battle, things aren't that simple that is granted, but just as today so in the ancient times, soldiers of the same cohort would try to fight on as a unit, no matter how chaotic the battle was. because in that time, there wasn't an individual, there was only the army.