Petition: Features from The Art of War
I've been reading The Art of War book by Sun Tzu lately, and I am loving this book. But as one might have easily noticed, there are many things Sun Tzu said which are not possible in TW games *till yet*. And that is the case even though we have two great games (first one and latest) which are based mostly, if not solely, on The Art of War.
I was thinking about some small features which can be added, which will greatly improve realism and immersion.
WALL OF TEXT COMING, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!
Here, my suggestion would be to add greater effect of seasons. When in desert, your troops will behave somewhat 'dried out'. They will lose stamina even more faster than it used to be in previous games. And a better morale effect for fighting in day and night.Heaven signifies night and day, cold and heat, time and seasons.
You can add the feature to 'choose' the time of attack. Currently, we are limited to attack at night or day, but adding an option like 'attack in the evening' or 'attack at sunrise' would be better. I know, those are already in the game but they are currently not choosable.
This is a problem. The AI most of the time cannot recognize baits. Or if it recognizes them, they don't use the opportunity.Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder and crush him.
I used to shoot enemy knights with mounted archers in Medieval 2, hoping to make them come out of formation and leave their infantry vulnerable. But those knights simply used to stand there, dying of missile fire. By the time they began to attack, there were only 3-4 of them left. They wavered and routed without touching my lines, and I had already stopped attacking them.
Next, in RTW, I attacked a large Thracian army as the Julii. I attacked their shield wall, and then retreated. But instead of chasing me, they reformed and stood where they were. Even barbarians didn't chase me when I retreated.
Only FoTS (and thus Shogun II) AI has recognized the baits as of yet. But it too has some problems. I purposely left weak flanks and large gap in the center of my army. The center pathway led straight to my general. But AI chose to attack my divided army and plunged all of his men on the flanks.
My suggestion here would be to make AI neither too much robust, nor too dumb as it was. Holding out baits is an essential thing, but sometimes it is impossible due to AI simply climbing to the hill and getting defeated instead of coming downhill and winning.
Perhaps, like using Withdraw button will make enemy units break formation and chase the 'supposedly routing' units.
Yes, it is Total War. But there should be decisiveness. A battle should not result in "just another battle" as many of our respected forum members have pointed out. There should be meaning to war, and it should be more destructive to everyone including player and the AI.There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.
My suggestion here would be to make battles more decisive, and AI war exhaustion. In Medieval 2, AI is fresh to fight from start of the game to the end. Even the player will get tired of something that lasts constantly for 800 turns.
AI should propose peace talks after long period of wars and battles, even if things are seemingly going his way. In Shogun 2-FoTS, this was sometimes seen as I have tried myself. Me (Aizu) and Nagaoka had warred for most in game time-frame. We both had full stack armies, and then they defeated my army. But they also lost most of their troops while defeating me. Next turn, they proposed peace even though they certainly had a bigger hand, and they even became my vassal!
Supply system is badly needed. Making 'Winter Attrition' was a good initiative, but not enough. And supplies certainly cannot be represented by replenishment rate or infrastructure.Bring war material with you from home, but forage on the enemy. Thus the army will have food enough for its needs.
Armies can have their own 'food' system, like in vanilla Shogun II (according to as much as I have played it at my friend's house). Food will deplete for every army when in enemy territory, so that it will have to forage. There are levels of foraging, as Sun Tzu said that if you forage too much, you will starve quicker than an under supplied army due to nothing left to forage. Player must be allowed to set that level. If army runs out of food, THEN only it should suffer attrition.
This means, moving an army in friendly provinces without garrisoning them should raise their maintenance as they are moving. To quote Sun Tzu, "Poverty of the State exchequer causes an army to be maintained by contributions from a distance. Contributing to maintain an army at a distance causes the people to be impoverished."
This is a very good point he made. It is much better to capture an enemy unit alive than to eliminate it completely.In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy's country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good. So, too it is better to capture an army entire than to destroy it, to capture a regiment, detachment or a company entire than to destroy it.
But this feature, a very important feature, is missing from our beloved TW series. There are only two types of unit survival: either it gets shattered and disappears, or it is routed and flees somewhere else.
There was prisoner system in Medieval 2, but it was like a test session prototype program. You can release, ransom or execute prisoners. If I was a general, I would capture them and use them in my own army. Or I would keep them as prisoners and release them after the war to gain relation with my enemy.
Or sell them to galley-slave markets which is perfectly realistic in accordance to the timeframe.
This one is simple. And fun too.Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.
I suggest making more tactical maneuvers. Shogun 2 was best at this, required much tactical thinking. Napoleon was second.
It is a dilemma in it's own right. "Should I move that army on to Izu peninsula or continue on to Sagami? Or should I turn towards Kai and capture the mountain passes? But it will leave my Suruga side frontier open..." Thinking such was not uncommon, and very fun and immersive.
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There are many more suggestions I will post, all from the The Art of War, but not today. These are the ones I found in the first 3-4 chapters. I will post more tomorrow.
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