Total Improvement

[Onion Head]

Total Improvement

Let me start off by saying that I've been a Total War player since Shogun 1. But ever since I discovered Crusader Kings 2, I've found myself drawn less and less to TW games. The recent (and bumpy) release of Rome 2 doesn't help either. I've seen this being echoed by a lot of (former) TW players. So what? maybe I like Paradox's games more than TW, right? Wrong. Despite it's age, Medieval Total War (the original) is still my favorite game ever. It's been the most atmospheric and engrossing experience I've ever had in any strategy game.. and I want Total War to be like this again.. of the quality it deserves to be.

The Goal

The goal of this thread is to show what kind of game we, the players, want. What would your perfect Total War be like? The campaign, the battles, visuals, politics, immersion, UI looks and functions, quality of life stuff.. Anything! What do you like from previous games that is now missing? What do you like from non-TW games that should be blatantly ripped off? Any idea you think will improve Total War even slightly is valid, you don't have to come up with an entire new game.

Use Rome II as the template on which to improve, state the feature you take issue with and how you would change it. Hopefully CA will take note and maybe we'll see some if not many of these ideas in future Total War titles.


Lastly if you're making an elaborate post try to order them into different categories like Campaign Map/Battles/Visuals/Art etc.

Examples

Here are the changes I'd like to see. A lot of stuff from previous games that have disappeared or features present in Crusader Kings 2 or Europa Universalis 4. No need to state the obvious about the AI.

Battles

• No more special "magic" abilities like trample, use the whip and that sort of nonsense. Cut the crap, literally.
• Formations. Normal, loose and wedge formation for all units, even if they don't necessarily make sense. Same goes for guard mode.
• Bigger unit sizes, even if they come at the cost of exceptional graphics. And I mean seriously bigger, full stacks of at least 10k men, it's time.
• Slower pace of battles. If armies fight it out without any flanking going on a battle should take a while. That's not to say that a quick rout can't happen, a devastating charge in the flank should rout an army pretty quickly.
• Being on higher ground should improve the range of skirmishers.
• Pay a bit more attention to the map to battle representation of the area. Capture the feel of the forests/grassy plains of europe, the deserts of the middle east, the mountain passes of Iran and Afghanistan etc.
• Greater zoom range.
• Elaborate range for speeding up, from slow motion to dangerously fast.
• "Give ground" ability. The unit using it allows itself to be pushed back by the enemy. On/Off, no cooldown timer.

Campaign

• Zoom. Prefferably make it zoom so you can see about 2/3rd of the entire map, if not the whole thing. Right now with a mod, you can at best zoom out and see most of Spain.
• Don't compress the map. The world map of Rome II is compressed in it's width and it bothers me. Particularly noticable in Spain, Arabia and Persia. Example:
• Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

  
• Make resources more appealing. Having a gold mine should be an enormous boon for your economy.
• Bring back the old region specialties. Like "Constantinople is historically famous for it's Kataphraktoi, + X experience".
• Tone down the corridor map, half of Anatolia is inaccessible.
• Coastlines, please put cliffs only in limited places.
• Make army transports require 1 turn to build and as a prerequisite require a real fleet to guard it.
• Bring back "Set Capital".
• Bring back City View.
• Upon taking a settlement, ability to restore it to ally if it lost it recently and the ability to resurrect a dead nation.
• Region rename: Rename a region to a version used by the controlling faction, but within reason. For example, CK2 has Greek names for all of the regions in Anatolia, the Balkans and a bunch in Italy. Turkish names for the Anatolian regions, Arabic and Spanish names for Spanish regions, western names for the Levant regions and so on and so forth.
• Region/City manual rename just for the heck of it.
• Region religion.
• Region culture not so easily changed. Have it changed by chance, but with ways to increase the odds, like buildings, faction leader attributes, length of ownership. Not a gradual change like 40% Roman 60% Gallic or something, just a change of culture that denotes the majority like in CK2 and EU4.
• Family Trees. For any character in the game that isn't an agent.
• Titles. More a flavor feature than anything else but show the character's title when checking him out. Consul Gaius Julius Caesar, Shahanshah Darius, Prince Edward, Basileus Alexios etc. Titles for political offices and heirs.
• Different army cap. Fair warning this is a blatant rip off of EU4. Give 2 types of caps to the army: Unit cap and manpower cap. Unit cap is more of a guideline which can be exceeded but increases upkeep if you do, basically for desperate times if you can spare the money. The manpower cap is is simply the number of able bodied men in your lands. Your manpower decreases as you recruit units and when units replenish, and regenerates slowly. Caps at a certain point depending on the number of regions you own.
• Building construction should return to the way they were in Medieval 1, Rome 1, Med 2... Meaning you can build all buildings in just 1 city, instead of having just 6 slots. I'm fine with buildings that branch and exclude though.
• Technology should not limit units and buildings unless they were historically limited. Meaning tech should not be required for me to build barracks that enable the training of thessalian cavalry for instance, instead it is just limited by the place of the barracks in the building tree and the cost of that building. Some exception are there of course, it makes sense for units that are the result of army reforms later in the game.
• Military Tech should generally only increase unit efficiency, being offensive/defensive bonuses, better unit cohesion, better stamina, increased marching range and reforms. Civic Tech is largely fine but should only restrict buildings if they are a later invention.
• History Mode: If selected before campaign start will give bonuses to factions that were historically powerful.
• Turns per year selectable, tech building times scale accordingly.
• A generals rank should be more random. To clarify, currently every general starts with rank 1, which makes no sense to me. Is no one experienced or gifted? Apparently not. In Med 1 occasionally you'd recruit a unit with a general that was of a high rank. Ranks could also be gradually gained but the ones that started out with high command always stood out, and when you lost them you felt it.
• More stats for characters, and leveling up should not be limited to a generals rank. If I remember correctly the Med 1 stats were: Authority (for factionleaders), loyalty, dread, command, acumen. Authority of the monarch increases/decreases your generals loyalty and improves diplomacy standing, Loyalty: likelyhood to rebel/side with or against you in a civil war, dread/chivarly: either extreme increases the public order of a region, Acumen: Increases region income and public order (basically how well a person runs a region), increases tech bonus (for factionleaders).
• Early deaths. A lot of people died young. This one has to come in combination with multiple turns per year though.
• Return of high/low fertility of agricultural lands.
• Roads still dynamic show them as visibly improved. Dirt road -> stone road -> highway/royal road.
• Unit replenishing should cost money. Wars are expensive and so far I've never felt the necessity to sack a town. Caesar gained his wealth from the spoils of war eventually, we should too but only once we start sacking towns and raiding the countryside. Before that we should be bleeding money.
• Option to sack without taking the region for every faction.
• Agent/wonder videos should return.
• Bring back seasons.
• More refined and realistic appearance of the map. Less pronounced mountains. Smaller (and flatter) cities, but keep the way they expand. And i mean waaaaaaaaay smaller size of a 2 building slot city max.

I noticed that in the newer TW's once your empire gets to a certain size (quite early in the campaign) your economy becomes impeccable and you can basically grind your way to world domination with endless armies. Your nation is pretty much invulnerable (apart from that one civil war) and you have little else to manage during war and peace than your armies. I hope that the proposed manpower system can already make you think "I can't afford to start another war atm, I am too vulnerable" after a hard fought war but I don't think it's enough. To further slow the pace of a campaign it has to take longer to become economically strong and should depend on the base wealth of regions and effort put into developing lands and trade. Also an expanded political system could slow the pace further and give you more things to worry about than just "who to invade next".

Economy

In Med 1 it required a lot of time and effort to build a really strong economy by developing your lands and establishing trade routes. Exploiting your lands is generally enough to scrape by but not much more than that. Trade is needed to really bring in the cash. By giving patrol stance for fleets some serious trade benefits that would pay off having to have fleets for the full length of the trade route would greatly expand the trade income for a player that truly focuses on it. Just an idea to limit of easy wealth. Oh and have some regions be stupidly rich and others dirt poor in their base income. Really interested to hear more elaborate ideas for the economy.

Politics and Civil War

The slower pace should come hand in hand with multiple turns per year, reduced movement range of armies and an actual political system. Have the threat to your empire be..... your own empire. First step to expand the politics is to add governors. These guys have basically been missing since Med 1 where you gave an office to one of your generals and his stats affected the public order and income of the region. Depending on government type have governors (Roman/Byzantine empire) or chiefs/counts/dukes/satraps/sheikhs/emirs (barbarian/feudal/Persian/Muslim nations) for every region except the regions in the capital province that are under direct control of the monarch. The acumen of the governor will act as a (quite drastic) modifier for region income, their dread/chivalry will affect the public order of the region and their loyalty will come into play in the case of a civil war. Once a governor dies/served his term a new one is to be appointed and depending on the authority of the ruler there is a chance you or the nobles of the court will appoint a new one. Really high authority should nearly guarantee you appoint one of your choice from a large pool of capable characters, and low authority will increase the odds of a random noble of questionable skill and loyalty being appointed. For feudal nations, the counts/dukes are hereditary but high authority will make them turn over more of that money they extorted from their subject. Lastly have the loyalty of all characters increase with the duration the rule of your monarch (and have this bonus disappear upon his death) to emulate the hectic and uncertain time when a new monarch begins his/her rule.

This way with the effective governors or oppressed nobles of a ruler with high authority will usher in a golden age with their increased income, weak rulers will descend their nation into a dark age and will see their rule challenged by disloyal nobles and nearly all except the exceptional rulers will face uncertain times when they first ascend to the throne. It's kind of like CK2's vassal system, except they aren't playable and you control your whole empire in terms of recruiting from regions and building in them.

Also this can go hand in hand with the current limited system, where the support of your governors is determined by loyalty and counts for 10 court nobles (I randomly pulled that one out of the air), in addition to the unseen court nobles we have now. Political intrigue would be things like having a governor replaced or a count disgraced, stripped of his title and replaced. Once the balance is disturbed (should really only happen when you lack support) enough for civil war to erupts you.............. are forced to pick a side (Med 1 had this, come on CA)! The loyalty of governors will decide with whom they side with some random chance when their loyalty is not bad but not unquestionable the loyalty of your generals will decide with whom their armies side. No magic troops, they were all once your armies and they will train more in your former regions.

User Interface

• Informative and immersive unit/building cards. Shogun 2 was spot on, yet in rome 2 building cards are largely uninformative and offer no clue to what they actually would have looked like (immersion!!). 3d models like in Rome 1 are fine too if no artistic solution like shogun 2's can be found.
• The encyclopedia should should more elaborate unit and building art or screenshots. For me Med 1's unit cards were my favorite but popular opinion favors screenshots I believe. Med 1 unit cards: http://neobyzantium.com/wp-content/u...f-the-Army.jpg
• The UI as a whole should be fitting of the setting. Shogun 2 nailed it.

Please contribute

I'm probably forgetting a bunch of stuff and I didn't mention Multiplayer because I never touch the thing. Feel free to share any idea you think will improve the Total War series. Anything will do, colorblind friendly mode? go for it. No improvement is too small!

[Boyar'sNephew]

What he said.

[RZZZA]

medieval I was great, why can't CA just make another game like that. It's been 10+ years of blunders and going steadily backwards

[Xanto]

medieval I was great, why can't CA just make another game like that. It's been 10+ years of blunders and going steadily backwards

Medieval 1 is what CA should be comparing all Total War games too... it still remains my favorite Total War game today. So many cool features that really made the campaign feel like an actual RPG.

[TheCenturion24]

I'm guessing because they don't want to build a whole new engine for the game, which is both understandable and not.

[Enomine]

If only you had been in charge of development OP. I might have bought RII and been pulled away from Stainless Steel.

[Rittsy]

One of the things I really would like is an improved encyclopaedia, like you pointed out. It's easy enough to navigate now, but I'd like a little more information on the units themselves and how that particular faction used, examples of it through history, weapon type etc. Similar to how the Rome Total Realism team did it...information on what the unit is and how to use it, but then a big wall of text on historical points.

[GnaReffotsirk]

More realistic battle dynamics and systems. All it takes is imagination, implementation, and a little less laughing about. I don't know if they can program or is just a graphics company, but they should hire more dedicated programmers.

I've listed a few things regarding this way back, stating them would be repetitive. But I will try write up details and get back to this thread as soon as I get things sorted out.

Nice thread OP. Someone should copy-paste things in this thread in the future and just post them up or send it over via mail.

[Onion Head]

More realistic battle dynamics and systems. All it takes is imagination, implementation, and a little less laughing about. I don't know if they can program or is just a graphics company, but they should hire more dedicated programmers.

I've listed a few things regarding this way back, stating them would be repetitive. But I will try write up details and get back to this thread as soon as I get things sorted out.

Nice thread OP. Someone should copy-paste things in this thread in the future and just post them up or send it over via mail.

Thank you. I'll try to compile the list of features and try to get in contact with Jack once this thread starts rolling.

[SirRobin]

Maybe just hire the team that made the original MTW? And kick out the bozos.

Actually I feel sorry for the young kids who come to the Total War series these days, and think this is as good as it gets

[SirRobin]

Lots of good ideas in this thread. Personally, I would like to see a return to the old Risk-style map. It meant so much less micro managing, much better ambience, and much better gameplay, because the strategic AI worked better in the more simple setup.

More epic battles too, as all invading armies from neighbouring regions would be pitted against all defenders of the attacked region. You always tried to stack in your favour on the campaign map, but you never knew how it would play out once you hit "end turn" - the AI would often reinforce too, so the resulting battle might not look like you intended!

In all the newer games, all battles are played out immediately upon attack, so it's very easy (for the player) to strike at the weakest points.

[Jofoblie]

I agree with all of your battle ideas, but disagree with about half of your campaign ideas.

I quite like the framework of the game as it is, the way towns and regions work, the only problem is it lacks a few features. The implementation of a 'building browser' like they had in Rome and M2 would be nice; something to see what I'm going to want to tech toward. I like the way you can't build everything in every city, that way each region specializes and feels unique. Improved diplomacy options are needed, as well as an improved family/political structure. That feature really falls flat for me. I also really agree that replenishing armies should cost money. It's very frustrating to be in a foreign land and win a heroic defensive victory only to have the enemy's decimated forces return to full strength in 2 turns with no penalty whatsoever, but my forces need to retreat to regain strength in my own territory...

I don't think there's any need to overhaul anything though. I feel like your EU unit cap idea is unnecessary, and a couple of things like generals randomly dying young would be arbitrary and fun impeding.

Apart from that you make a lot of suggestions that I agree with, ESPECIALLY the ability to give cities to your allies. This is so important for immersion, I find myself wanting this feature in every single campaign I play.

[Onion Head]

I agree with all of your battle ideas, but disagree with about half of your campaign ideas.

I quite like the framework of the game as it is, the way towns and regions work, the only problem is it lacks a few features. The implementation of a 'building browser' like they had in Rome and M2 would be nice; something to see what I'm going to want to tech toward. I like the way you can't build everything in every city, that way each region specializes and feels unique. Improved diplomacy options are needed, as well as an improved family/political structure. That feature really falls flat for me. I also really agree that replenishing armies should cost money. It's very frustrating to be in a foreign land and win a heroic defensive victory only to have the enemy's decimated forces return to full strength in 2 turns with no penalty whatsoever, but my forces need to retreat to regain strength in my own territory...

I don't think there's any need to overhaul anything though. I feel like your EU unit cap idea is unnecessary, and a couple of things like generals randomly dying young would be arbitrary and fun impeding.

Apart from that you make a lot of suggestions that I agree with, ESPECIALLY the ability to give cities to your allies. This is so important for immersion, I find myself wanting this feature in every single campaign I play.

That's fair. For the unit cap I was looking for something that was a bit more flexible than what we have now, but still have the size of your faction determine how large your army can be. As for the early deaths I should probably have elaborated. I don't want characters to die at 29 or something, but have a more real chance that some of them die once they hit mid/late 40's. As opposed to them all hitting the 60's as I'm experiencing now, but maybe it's those Egyptian health potions . But I agree it's probably not for everyone.

And diplomacy! I just knew I was forgetting something incredibly important!

[mephhhh]

hey you know if 5 of your ideas were implemented successfully the game might be different.

[Eofor]

I haven't played Rome 2 yet so I cannot comment on to what I would like to see improve with it in particular. However there are problems with the series as a whole that I want to see solved.
-Religion/culture needs to be completely rethought. I don't care how fast or slow it is, the way it's been implemented in Total War is fundamentally flawed.
-Get rid of unit tiers. Stupid nineties RTS metagame crap that has no place in a game like this.
-A limit on unit recruitment based on the infrastructure you build in a province in order to stop elite spam, maybe with the M2 unit replenishment system brought back.
-A levy system that allows you to recruit large numbers of units for little to no cost, but with drawbacks that increase over time. This way there's actually a difference between levies and professional soldiers other than stats and cost.
-Implementing supply lines in some way.
-Generals' traits and skills affecting their armies is fun. I'd like to have individual unit captains do the same thing.

[Wicked Moose]

Good post OP. I support most of your suggestions.

For me, the most important factors are:
-bigger battles (as you say, 10 000 men army should be standard by now), better use of formations for player and AI. Ancient armies didn't usually deploy 5 men deep with no reserves behind that thin line. And I don't like fighting till both sides have 90% casualties, but that can be modded, so I don't see that as a problem. And I hate how complete armies are running around for miles and miles, it happens a lot on all warscape games, especially shogun2 and rome2. How about just marching to eachother in an organised way?
-deeper AI features, and no, 3 different agents with 20 methods for poisoning stuff etc is not deep for me. EU4 is a bit too deep for a total war game I think, but something in between would be great. Now battles are a 'purpose' of playing a campaign game. Battles should be a means to improve your campaign situation, imho.
-Better and deeper diplomacy, e.g. your relations with your vassals. You should, imho, devide your kingdom into a core land and let the rest be governed by vassals. In wartime, you recruit units from your vassals. Lose too many units = vassal revolts against you. And so many more features you can add to make your campaign experience somewhat interesting, now it's very shallow to me.

edit: forgot about the traits and skills:
Immersion dropped a lot for me since the introduction of skill trees. Every general/agent is the same, at 20 years old they are useless, you use them a lot so they improve artificially into 60 year old super generals/agents. I prefer the Rome 1/Medieval 2 trait system. I love the Roma Serructum 2 system where most generals are mediocre, some are bad, some are great, and you can't turn a crap one into a great one just by winning some easy battles

[AnthoniusII]

These sugestions and wishes have been posted in douzens of threads here in TWC and in Official CA site....
There is NO answer from ANY CA member of the developing team if they have any intention to add them or what is their vision of the game that drove them in the desisions they made.
Just silence....

[kambiz]

Great post Onion Head This is weird that once again Good old "Unit numbers on the Unit cards" been forgotten to be mentioned !? As well as some other good features like :

-Easy-old darg&drop mechanic for merging units
-Being able to set the specific amount of money in diplomacy screen just by typing
-and great new (thus not old) "Drop-in battle" feature. This one probably is one of the best new features introduced in the series but cut due to no reason from Rome2 (?)

itles. More a flavor feature than anything else but show the character's title when checking him out. Consul Gaius Julius Caesar, Shahanshah Darius, Prince Edward, Basileus Alexios etc. Titles for political offices and heirs.

Thank god someone finally nailed this I love the "Traits & Ancillary" system We had in Rome and later Medieval 2 , cause these very little things are the ones add a lot to the immersion. CA was good (If not great) at paying atention to this little but important details. I expected after over 10 years of experience they will improve them even more for Rome2 but ... Well ... Rome 2 of course failed in so many ways :p

Actually I feel sorry for the young kids who come to the Total War series these days, and think this is as good as it gets

I was a young lad when first time bought Medieval 1. It is strange that While I'm getting more and more mature ,the series went quite the opposite ! reminds Me of "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button"

[Greve Af Göteborg]

These ideas would have made Rome 2 the best total war title in the series. Sadly CA seems to be going in a completely different direction
I recommend that you post this on the official forum, CA does not visit the twcenter very often (Though they were here very frequently before launch)

[Anibal at portas]

the game of rome II is a campaign empty, without content, boring, simplistic,arcade and repetitive.CA has not bothered to give immersion, realism, historicity, content and script to the campaign and the result is a horrible, empty and boring campaign.i'm a veteran player of the totalwar since 2000. i discovery the paradox and AGEOD games and that's what made ​​the games lacking in totalwar .if games totalwar take care of these aspects would be the best strategy games and the totalwar AI is horrible and CA not done never a good AI.now rome II campaign is bored soon playing it and this has to change.