Auto-generated campaign map battles?

[DavidtheDuke]

I loved this part of the MTW2/RTW engine... except when there was retarded mountain battles with unrealistic terrain battles. I have heard both stories that the maps are generated from the campaign map ala MTW2/RTW, but from another article that basically a battle map was made for each province by hand. Does anyone know either way?

[theDaedricPrince]

Battle maps were created for every single province in the game. If you see a battle map in one part of the world, you won't see it else where. So I highly doubt it's all hand-made. I'm guessing the engine randomly generates a map, as you said, specifically for the region/area you are fighting on. Then it saves that map just in case you fight on it again.

But I may be wrong.

[DavidtheDuke]

Battle maps were created for every single province in the game. If you see a battle map in one part of the world, you won't see it else where. So I highly doubt it's all hand-made. I'm guessing the engine randomly generates a map, as you said, specifically for the region/area you are fighting on. Then it saves that map just in case you fight on it again.

But I may be wrong.

This is actually extremely important for mods, as separate battle maps for each region in a new campaign map mod would be probably too large a task for most modding teams, if not all.

[Lockpick]

In one of the newer videos they said that there is one large battlemap covering the whole campaign map. If you start a battle the actual battlefield is a cut out part of this "full battlemap".
If you start a battle on position X you fight on the battlemap on this position every time. If you move left to position Y you fight on the cut out part of the battlemap at position Y.
If X and Y are close together you may be able to see the hill that was on map X on your right flank is located on map Y on your left flank. (the hill stay where it is, you now only fight on another point of the battlemap)
Maps are not generated or "made per province", it is one large battlemap.
This may be a problem for modders, because for every change at the campaign map the battlemap must also be changed.
So either they do it by hand. -> A lot of work.
Or they do generate a new map. -> May look ugly and you have to check every part of it for bugs.

[familyguy1]

I loved this part of the MTW2/RTW engine... except when there was retarded mountain battles with unrealistic terrain battles. I have heard both stories that the maps are generated from the campaign map ala MTW2/RTW, but from another article that basically a battle map was made for each province by hand. Does anyone know either way?

Oh god I hated that so much. I randomly deploy on the side of a mountain

[Stoferr]

Here's how it is done, as far as I've understood it. In a way its generated and in a way its not. They're describing it as a huge battlemap beneath the Campaign map which is accurate, but also a bit simplified.

When a battle is played a map is generated from certain sources from the campaign map. First of all the highmap is drawn from the campaign map, so in terms of hills and height variance, the map should be the same every time a battle is fought there. In terms of forrets, lakes, villages and other objects effecting gameplay, there will probably also be some source that makes sure that they are the same place in every battle. However small stuff such as bushes, foliage, rocks etc are most likely autogenerated from time to time and will thus vary from one battle to another. But this makes sense, first of all, its would take a of bufferspace to save every time objects location, secondly, lets say that you are playing a battle in 70BC and then by random chance plays another battle at the exactly same place in 140AD, it would be silly if every bush remained exactly the same, even tho you might not remeber thos small differences anyway.. (Trees in forrest will most likely also vary, as forrests are probably just seen as zones by the game).

A have a lot of faith in this new system, it is surely a hell of a lot better that anything they've ever done before, and that wasn't bad at all.

[Muizer]

In one of the latest videos it was said that for multiplayer purposes you could have battles at any point on the campaign map resulting in thousands of possible battlefields. Well, if this is the case, then surely even CA wont have made all of it by hand at battlefield scale?

[CDR Hurricane]

In one of the latest videos it was said that for multiplayer purposes you could have battles at any point on the campaign map resulting in thousands of possible battlefields. Well, if this is the case, then surely even CA wont have made all of it by hand at battlefield scale?

This was possible in RTW with a text file edit. It was fully vanilla multiplayer compatible and only the host needed the file.

[DavidtheDuke]

In one of the latest videos it was said that for multiplayer purposes you could have battles at any point on the campaign map resulting in thousands of possible battlefields. Well, if this is the case, then surely even CA wont have made all of it by hand at battlefield scale?

This sounds very promising, creating a autogenerating system is alot smarter than devoting hundreds of thousands of man hours, and likewise, hopefully very nice for mods.

[DavidtheDuke]

In one of the latest videos it was said that for multiplayer purposes you could have battles at any point on the campaign map resulting in thousands of possible battlefields. Well, if this is the case, then surely even CA wont have made all of it by hand at battlefield scale?

This sounds very promising, creating a autogenerating system is alot smarter than devoting hundreds of thousands of man hours, and likewise, hopefully very nice for mods.

[Modestus]

In one of the latest videos it was said that for multiplayer purposes you could have battles at any point on the campaign map resulting in thousands of possible battlefields. Well, if this is the case, then surely even CA wont have made all of it by hand at battlefield scale?

The could if the amount of tactical maps that make up the campaign map is not huge.

The large cities (Provincial Capitals) take up quite a bit of space, Rome for example covers a large area and for that you need only the one Siege map, some of the cities appear to be so close to each other you could throw a stone from on to the other.

With impassable terrain there is no need for a tactical map because you cannot have a battle and there appears to be a lot of impassable terrain.

Its hard to tell what is really going on, I was looking at the Syracuse tactical map and comparing it to the campaign map and that one map alone could cover a large area of the island, we know you can see the pyramids from Alexandria so I think its possible that a single tactical map in RTW2 covers a much greater area of the campaign then in RTW1 and if you could compare the two RTW1 would be very much bigger then RTW2.


Either way it will be interesting to see how it works because in some screens the world of RTW2 looks tiny with everybody nearly on top of each other.

[RoyalNobody]

[High Fist]

1) That's Roma Surrectum right? I believe the battle maps were changed so that there would be giant mountains such as these (gonna be changed for the new patch)
2) Why are all of your infantry units first cohorts?? >