Cities & Villages Suggestion

**theDaedricPrince** · January 10, 2013, 07:22 PM

You know how on all Total War games, you really have no control over your cities and such? All you do is upgrade em to get better stuff. What if you were able to actually customize a province without actually going in the province like a city building game (since that would be a lot of extra work for the CA team.)

So, my suggestion is pretty big. Starting with the layout. When you're in the game, you can click on a province you own, and click the 'detailed customization' option. Basically, you're presented a map of your province. If it was a city, you obviously have all the buildings and such. (keep in mind, this is a map. So you can't see the citizens and such.)

Now, say, on the map, there is a road, a farm, and a house. You can add houses to improve population rate and growth, but this would require more guards and soldiers if you want to avoid crimes.

The best part about this is, you get to tactically place objects such as towers, barriers, etc. If you ever engage in a battle in that province. So you have more variety and power over how you fight your battles, if an enemy is seiging you.

Just spit-balling though.

**XxAndrewxX2525** · January 10, 2013, 07:29 PM

Sounds like a good idea for a different game.

**Krieglord** · January 10, 2013, 07:40 PM

I have to agree with Andrew

**Deafening Milk** · January 10, 2013, 07:42 PM

Id like this but i am worried it could lead to exploits, i.e. the ai always deploys one one side of the town and you place all the towers there. I imagine that the example ive given wouldnt happen but i imagine you get the gist of it

**Emperor of The Great Unknown** · January 10, 2013, 07:43 PM

kinda like this game http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wargame...ean_Escalation

I would like to see maybe a province wide 3d map for each region where you can build small outposts forts, and improve the city. And instead of an army moving into a region and seiging the city, it could be like back in the original Shogun where we attacked a province as a whole, and it would be like a 3D map overlay in real time where an invading force would have to traverse the province perhaps taking outposts, raiding towns, and then seiging a city, and the defending forces would have to scatter around the province, or defend the city, or meet them in a large engagement. When forces in (real time) approach each other on the map you zoom in to the normal battle scale on the local area and do a battle, but instead you can zoom out during the battle to the 3D map (in real time still) and send aid as real time reinforcements.

Grand campaign map back to checkerboard province movement.

A possible example of the real time province map where you can build structures, setup camps and manevour your forces in real time.

And of course all the battles would be fought in the regular battle map when forces approached each other.

That way invading forces would have to send cavalry scouting forces out in real time to prevent ambush, raid villages, to keep their army fed and rested. And then seige the settlement. In a sense it would be like each province invasion would be like its own mini campaign, adding a 3rd level of depth in-between the turn based grand campaign and the real time battle map.

**Ichon** · January 10, 2013, 07:46 PM

Not bad but 1 turn would take days to play.

**Emperor of The Great Unknown** · January 10, 2013, 07:57 PM

Well the time scale would probably be like accelerated, and an auto-resolve feature could probably prevent that. There should maybe be also a timer where, the invaders are neither successful nor driven out. (siege) in this case it would be like postponed and you would have to wait till the next turn (season) to try again.

**XxAndrewxX2525** · January 10, 2013, 08:58 PM

Originally Posted by Emperor of The Great Unknown

Well the time scale would probably be like accelerated, and an auto-resolve feature could probably prevent that. There should maybe be also a timer where, the invaders are neither successful nor driven out. (siege) in this case it would be like postponed and you would have to wait till the next turn (season) to try again.

Sounds like a different game.

**HigoChumbo** · January 10, 2013, 10:11 PM

guys, give this thread a read:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=583274

Not just the op, explore the entire thread a bit... you will see that even the Wargame: European Escalation reference has been made.

Anyways, i actually like your approach which actually would solve the technical limitations of mine (mine was merging the battle and the campaign map in one single fully rendered real time map), you could retain a turn based map and instead of making the entire campaign real time 3d, you just make it by smaller bits, that you can enter (from campaign to 3d province) at any time to improve and place elements. The actual province int he campaign map would be a simplification of the real time one and you would not only build but also fight in the province you had been making.

This would reduce the real-time merged campaign/battle map scale a lot, say to a province with a handfull of settlements, maybe 1 bigger city and several smaller towns, wich would be an scale already achieved by a game (ruse/wargame:EE).

This also would add something that TW fans had been asking for for ages, a bigger relationship from the terrain in wich you start a battle in the campaign map and the terrain that you actually find in the battle map (to the point that you would be playing in a map that you know because you had been developing, and if not, that will always be the same map so you can eventually learn the terrain if you fight several times in the same place). And at the same time, you would not need to completelly revamp the franchise (as was my idea) since you still could keep the current turn-based map (i still would love a real time merged campaign/battle map but i see there are

s of limitations to that design).

I don't know, but i really feel that the map innovations that ruse/wargame have brought to strategy gaming, should be implemented or at least influence total war in one way or another. It just fits like a charm. A better (read... a good) city building system would be welcome too, since the current "my city is a list of buildings that i make bigger" system is not fun at all.

SUMARIZING: damn, the 3d province idea is great and actually better than mine since it is not fantasy and could actually be done with the current technology (i imagine it has its drawbacks... but still, seems doable so far).

Originally Posted by Deafening Milk

Id like this but i am worried it could lead to exploits, i.e. the ai always deploys one one side of the town and you place all the towers there. I imagine that the example ive given wouldnt happen but i imagine you get the gist of it

Not necesarily if you make the campaign map province a representation of the real time province that you can enter (that being shape, topography features, settlements and other player-made structures etc) so depending on which part of that represenation the ai army started the fight, thats the part in which the battle would start in the province map (it would be cool if the entire province was the battle map)

I insist, i think something similar to Wargame would be just amazing for total war. And who knows... maybe it would even open the path for those World War Total Wars everyone has been asking for since the beggining of times (even when i dont really care much about them)

Originally Posted by XxAndrewxX2525

Sounds like a good idea for a different game.

Originally Posted by Krieglord

I have to agree with Andrew

Damn, we will never get rid of purists =)

But hey... if they pulled out the workforce to work in a new franchise... just imagine.

**androcathr** · January 10, 2013, 11:24 PM

Sounds like a good idea for a different game.

**ray243** · January 11, 2013, 12:22 AM

Originally Posted by androcathr

Sounds like a good idea for a different game.

It is still the same concept. A turn base grand strategy game mixed with real time battles.

Having a in-between level of gameplay would resolve tons of problems faced by CA. With the RTW game engine, they find it hard to prevent an AI from simply bypassing the player's defending army.

The player and the AI can simply avoid an AI army and proceed to wreck havoc on any city.

To resolve this, CA created a new game engine for Empires, whereby they implemented an Zone of interception/Area of influence for any army on the campaign map.

The downside is this will create a scenario whereby the player have no control over the battlemap's terrain.

Despite what you read about setpiece battles, you have to know set piece battles are quite rare. Most battles in the ancient world is full of many small scale skirmishing, as well as manoeuvring large armies.

Look at the campaign of Hannibal and Caesar, and see how much of their generalship was devoted to manoeuvring, making sure their army was well supplied and how Caesar uses Roman military engineering to triumph over the Gauls.

**Emperor of The Great Unknown** · January 11, 2013, 06:18 AM

Wait are you guys talking about my idea or the OP. If so I appreciate the love

Yeah and I would like to an improved role of skirmishing, making units like light infantry and light cavalry actually useful strategically instead of just cheap.

Now real time fow, and speed of units and attrition can be really taken into affect, instead of just movement points.