Sliders for Turns

[PROMETHEUS ts]

What do you think of this idea?
Would it be implementable?
Woudl settle everyone desires?

The idea is to have

1 Starting dates for the great campaigns divided in :

Early 270 bc
Middle 170 bc
Late 70 bc

Then a slider with turns per year :

1 , 2 or 4 ...

So you can have as much as 1200 turns with all seasons when starting from 270 bc or as few as just 100 turns if picking starting date late with 1 turn per year ...

[Doe3000]

One of things I loved in the original Medieval was the ability to launch Early, Middle and Late campaigns. I sorely missed this option in Medieval 2, as I had far more interest in the Late Medieval world than the early era. The only thing I could do was to play the game from 1086 (or what ever the starting date was) and then hope to reach the 1400's before I completed the objectives. The chances are I rarely reached that point, so missed out on playing my favourite era. It'd be great if they brought this option back, but I doubt it considering it hasn't been a part of the Total War series since 2003.

As for the yearly turns, I don't mind as much, although the option of changing it to seasonal would be great.

[uku123]

I really like the idea but there is 1 big problem that seems to have been overlooked by most:
in TW games, theres normally victory conditions to control X amount or certain regions in Y time.

I dont think there can be big enought map to set balanced victory conditions for 1200 turns - you can problaby conquer all map in 200 if you play well. Controlling whole world in 200 BC would kinda suck ;(

[Tim_Ward]

You would have to slow down movement and built times to retain the game balance.

[uku123]

You would have to slow down movement and built times to retain the game balance.

Yes but whole point for slowing time down would be so it would not take 5 years to move from Rome to North France, but more realistic time.

[PROMETHEUS ts]

You would have to slow down movement and built times to retain the game balance.

Exactly , allwpuld scale consequently.... Generals live longer , travels are shorter etc...

For example is ridiculous t take 1 year to cross a europe , but would make eventually more sense in A seasonal setting... And with a year movement you could cross all of europe in one turn if not even more...

[uku123]

Exactly , allwpuld scale consequently.... Generals live longer , travels are shorter etc...

For example is ridiculous t take 1 year to cross a europe , but would make eventually more sense in A seasonal setting... And with a year movement you could cross all of europe in one turn if not even more...

I would think that they have similar movement range to Medieval II and Rome I with 1 year per turn. For balance reasons they cannot make traveling ability too long. So 1 year turns would mean unrealisicly slow travels.
If u make turns seasonal to retain same balance you would really have to slow movements down 4xfold which would really suck - only reason for seasons to make sence is to have more realistic movement and with this its hard to balance 1200 turn game in map thats made with 300 turns in mind.

[Muizer]

Exactly , allwpuld scale consequently.... Generals live longer , travels are shorter etc...

The AI and the campaign map design have to be optimised for a particular movement allowance and I don't think making those scalable is feasible.

[PROMETHEUS ts]

The AI and the campaign map design have to be optimised for a particular movement allowance and I don't think making those scalable is feasible.

Never seen any prove of that , because its all in the stats and the dimension of the map is fine , no mod that implemented 4 seasons had any issue, plus a simple multiplier would do the job ,some 20 mins work probably .

[Muizer]

Never seen any prove of that , because its all in the stats and the dimension of the map is fine , no mod that implemented 4 seasons had any issue, plus a simple multiplier would do the job ,some 20 mins work probably .

I'm talking about the movement allowance in relation to the topology of the campaign map. I'm not going to explain that. It should be obvious.

[PROMETHEUS ts]

I dont see the problem , a 1200 turns map is a choice to have a much deeper and long campaign , so slowing down movements would be ok ...

[uku123]

If it would take 20 turns instead of 5 to move from Rome to North France (5 years in total), how would it make you more attatched to generals and everything? You would not be able to too more stuff with your generals, just same thing takes longer and they still die from old age after few wars. Also having to camp out 5 winters for such small distance would not be cool at all. it would just make game more annoying, not more "realistic".

Dont get me wrong, i would really love to see 4 or at least 2 season turns, but i just cannot see how can they balance the sliders IF the original game is made for 1 year/turn.

[Tim_Ward]

You would not be able to too more stuff with your generals, just same thing takes longer and they still die from old age after few wars.

You know, the coding challenge represented by keeping the life-span of the generals right in a case where a turn can represent anything from 1 to 0.25 years is something that would keep a first year computing student occupied for, ooh, a good 20 minutes? I think people who write 3D game engines for al living can handle it.

[uku123]

You know, the coding challenge represented by keeping the life-span of the generals right in a case where a turn can represent anything from 1 to 0.25 years is something that would keep a first year computing student occupied for, ooh, a good 20 minutes? I think people who write 3D game engines for al living can handle it.

My point was that if u make traveling distance 4x slower with 4 seasons you can still do same amount of stuff with generals, just takes longer turns - so they die off after same number of campaigns as without season system! Not that they cannot adjust life years with turns..

[Tim_Ward]

Well, I like the idea.

Unfortunately, I can't see it being implemented. Maybe if we go on about it enough, it'll end up in a patch or in the next game, though.

[Walid]

Why can't I vote?

[The Great Montrose]

Why can't I vote?

I dont think you have enough posts.

[Scrapple206]

I understand the desire for more options but I feel that it would be better for CA to focus on core gameplay mechanics that matter. I know that many people are upset with the decision to only have 1 turn per year but they must have had their reasons. I also know that there is a large enough group of hardcore total war fans want multiple turns per year that some modder will be create mods with multiple turns per year with seasons. I would also like to point out that keep in mind we do not know anything really about the campaign and how its going to work so I would recommend to just wait and see how it will all work before passing judgment.

[PROMETHEUS ts]

I understand the desire for more options but I feel that it would be better for CA to focus on core gameplay mechanics that matter. I know that many people are upset with the decision to only have 1 turn per year but they must have had their reasons. I also know that there is a large enough group of hardcore total war fans want multiple turns per year that some modder will be create mods with multiple turns per year with seasons. I would also like to point out that keep in mind we do not know anything really about the campaign and how its going to work so I would recommend to just wait and see how it will all work before passing judgment.

DO you think that at CA are just 4 guys working on the game? Like one makingunits , one campaign , one multiplayer and one organizing?
A small slider woudl take really few for them to be implemented , if a modder can do it in less than an afternoon for the other games, what woudl take to CA to implement a small slider? Would make everyone happy ...

Also for Who posted pointless extra work ...

As I said above is not that much of a work and also I do not want to have to mod it in couse then I wouln't have the largest campaign with maximum turns and maximum difficulty with achievements to unlock ... and also it wouln't be supported officially .... then it wouln't be available unless the mod will be moddable wich we donot know and not know to what extent ...

So IMO the slider is the best solution for everyone ...

[daelin4]

DO you think that at CA are just 4 guys working on the game? Like one makingunits , one campaign , one multiplayer and one organizing?
A small slider woudl take really few for them to be implemented , if a modder can do it in less than an afternoon for the other games, what woudl take to CA to implement a small slider? Would make everyone happy ...

Yeah it takes more than simply adding a slider to make your idea possible, even feasible, let alone popular.
But I'm sure you can prove this by trying to add a slider, then designing the game where the actions of said slider changes a huge amount of the game's dynamics in a predicatble and scaled fashion. Then somehow have absolutely no need to exhaustively test out whether this change in scale actually works.
Doesn't sound so simple to me then...