Increase battlefield size?

[Defensore]

Hi everyone,

One of the things that bug in Rome 2 (also in other TW games, for that matter) is how small the battlefields are. If you ever played a mod like NTW 3 for Napoleon, you know how bigger they can be.

They are so small that in 40v40 battles there's barely room to maneuver. Also, since Rome 2 has the line of sight feature, increasing the battlefield would make maneuvering and scouting a bigger part of the battles.

Here's an example of a 40v40 custom test battle, Iceni vs Rome:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

As you can see by the red circles marking the end of the battlefield, there's barely any ground left.

So , is there a way to increase the size of the battlefields? If this is not in the interest of the DeI team, is it something I could do on my own?

Thanks!

Bonus, giant barbarians:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[stevehoos]

This^ and among other things those dreaded night spotlights, wonder if they could be turned a yellowish hue to at least give them a non apparition like appearance?

[Lieutenant Sharpe]

I have also experienced (mainly 40 v 40) battles were there is hardly any room for the flanks to maneuver. However, Rome 2 armies are often spread a lot thinner than I would assume ancient armies were. Perhaps a mass mechanic can be implemented were denser lines can push through thinly spread lines forcing the player and AI to create deeper army formations. Back to the map, expanding the map could be useful but often generals liked to secure their flanks with terrain like a river or a hilly region. Possibly maps could be expanded to allow maneuvering but more terrain features could also be added to aid armies in covering their flanks.

[Defensore]

I have also experienced (mainly 40 v 40) battles were there is hardly any room for the flanks to maneuver. However, Rome 2 armies are often spread a lot thinner than I would assume ancient armies were. Perhaps a mass mechanic can be implemented were denser lines can push through thinly spread lines forcing the player and AI to create deeper army formations. Back to the map, expanding the map could be useful but often generals liked to secure their flanks with terrain like a river or a hilly region. Possibly maps could be expanded to allow maneuvering but more terrain features could also be added to aid armies in covering their flanks.

Good points!

Also, my pictures are also from a 40v40 battle; sleep depravation got the best of me. OP fixed now.

[Cope]

I have also experienced (mainly 40 v 40) battles were there is hardly any room for the flanks to maneuver. However, Rome 2 armies are often spread a lot thinner than I would assume ancient armies were. Perhaps a mass mechanic can be implemented were denser lines can push through thinly spread lines forcing the player and AI to create deeper army formations.

Shame we are going to have to wait for CA to release additional modding tools before the battle AI/maps can be edited.

Speaking about map sizes, I think the issue you raise is also prevalent in the siege and god-awful, boring and incessantly repetitive minor coastal settlement battles. I for one am so underwhelmed by the siege maps, especially those which are meant to depict some of the ancient worlds most wonderful cities - Carthage, Athens, Jerusalem, Syracuse, Babylon, and Petra to name but a few. Half the time these supposed jewels of antiquity look like cattle villages with a disproportionately large stone wall surrounding them. What's more, because CA are apparently incapable of providing the AI with sufficiently intelligent path finding abilities, many of the major cities have been stripped of urban and other built up areas for the benefit of the AI.

The only city in the game which has any sort of scope or awe about it is Roma on extra large: the rest just lack any sort of 'epicness'. If they can make a decent city for Rome, why not everywhere else? The irony of it is that on the campaign map these cities are cosmically large...whilst in battle, where it actually matters, they are sized. What gets to me more is that it felt like Rome I and Medieval II had bigger and more inspirational siege maps...sad really.

I honestly cannot wait until map tools are released so that people can get to work on making some truly great siege maps and can get rid of those crappy minor settlements.

[Lieutenant Sharpe]

Shame we are going to have to wait for CA to release additional modding tools before the battle AI/maps can be edited.

Speaking about map sizes, I think the issue you raise is also prevalent in the siege and god-awful, boring and incessantly repetitive minor coastal settlement battles. I for one am so underwhelmed by the siege maps, especially those which are meant to depict some of the ancient worlds most wonderful cities - Carthage, Athens, Jerusalem, Syracuse, Babylon, and Petra to name but a few. Half the time these supposed jewels of antiquity look like cattle villages with a disproportionately large stone wall surrounding them. What's more, because CA are apparently incapable of providing the AI with sufficiently intelligent path finding abilities, many of the major cities have been stripped of urban and other built up areas for the benefit of the AI.

The only city in the game which has any sort of scope or awe about it is Roma on extra large: the rest just lack any sort of 'epicness'. If they can make a decent city for Rome, why not everywhere else? The irony of it is that on the campaign map these cities are cosmically large...whilst in battle, where it actually matters, they are sized. What gets to me more is that it felt like Rome I and Medieval II had bigger and more inspirational siege maps...sad really.

I honestly cannot wait until map tools are released so that people can get to work on making some truly great siege maps and can get rid of those crappy minor settlements.

Yes, CA announced its "extraordinary" Carthage map and massive siege battles, but really the are quite lacking. The walls hold off the enemy for 30 seconds, it's a joke. There are no inner-citadels and massive fortifications. Heck, Syracuse was made up of four inner city areas, two of which held out for some time after the first two were over run. In game, Syracuse doesn't even have walls. Other provinces have one basic set of walls that are next to useless. It really is a shame. Really what I want are epic settlements that require enormous assault forces, night attacks to secure the gate with elite troops, or a betrayal opening up the gates for slaughter in order to capture a walled settlement.

[Cope]

Yes, CA announced its "extraordinary" Carthage map and massive siege battles, but really the are quite lacking. The walls hold off the enemy for 30 seconds, it's a joke. There are no inner-citadels and massive fortifications. Heck, Syracuse was made up of four inner city areas, two of which held out for some time after the first two were over run. In game, Syracuse doesn't even have walls. Other provinces have one basic set of walls that are next to useless. It really is a shame. Really what I want are epic settlements that require enormous assault forces, night attacks to secure the gate with elite troops, or a betrayal opening up the gates for slaughter in order to capture a walled settlement.

Yes, and again what is sad is the fact that double walled settlements existed in Medieval II - another feature that was cut from the game.

Siege battles are just really bad, even though they actually work now.

What I think should happen - not that it will in a long time, if at all - is the following:
- Torches need to leave this game forever.
- Walls, towers and gates need increased hit points.
- Towers need increased damage.
- Artillery ships need to have vastly decreased damage.
- All siege weapons, including ballistae and onagers, should be made into deployables like towers, ladders and rams. This would mean that you could deploy 5 or 6 projectile siege weapons without sacrificing troop numbers. This is important because if you want to increase wall hit points then you'd need to be able to have enough projectile siege weapons to break it down. It would not really be feasible to have an army where 6 or 7 slots were taken up by siege equipment.
- Cities need an overall face lift.

[Lieutenant Sharpe]

Yes, and again what is sad is the fact that double walled settlements existed in Medieval II - another feature that was cut from the game.

Siege battles are just really bad, even though they actually work now.

What I think should happen - not that it will in a long time, if at all - is the following:
- Torches need to leave this game forever.
- Walls, towers and gates need increased hit points.
- Towers need increased damage.
- Artillery ships need to have vastly decreased damage.
- All siege weapons, including ballistae and onagers, should be made into deployables like towers, ladders and rams. This would mean that you could deploy 5 or 6 projectile siege weapons without sacrificing troop numbers. This is important because if you want to increase wall hit points then you'd need to be able to have enough projectile siege weapons to break it down. It would not really be feasible to have an army where 6 or 7 slots were taken up by siege equipment.
- Cities need an overall face lift.

Yep I agree. During September I mentioned making all war machines over the size of a scorpion deployables. Historically, only a small percentage of field battles used significant amounts of ballistae or other large projectile launchers. Another point about sieges, defenders need a way to roll stones or oil or something down on troops climbing ladders. Otherwise the prize for the first man on the wall really isn't that significant haha.

[Hetairos]

If other mods from previous TW games did it, than we might be able to do it as well. Did those mods though had the map editing tools like TEd? If so we dont have them at the moment

But I would love to see such improvements here.

[Defensore]

If other mods from previous TW games did it, than we might be able to do it as well. Did those mods though had the map editing tools like TEd? If so we dont have them at the moment

But I would love to see such improvements here.

As far as I am aware there are no official map editing tools for Napoleon, which is the base game for the mod I used as example. I might be wrong though.
Though I only played it in multi, generally 4v4 or 3v3, so I can't be sure about single player.

Do the battlefields scale up accordingly to the number of players in multi? If yes, I suppose this could give a potential hint to increase the size in SP.

[Causeless]

As far as I am aware there are no official map editing tools for Napoleon, which is the base game for the mod I used as example. I might be wrong though.
Though I only played it in multi, generally 4v4 or 3v3, so I can't be sure about single player.

Do the battlefields scale up accordingly to the number of players in multi? If yes, I suppose this could give a potential hint to increase the size in SP.

I tried a 4vs4 custom battle, with each army at 20 units. Still the same map size.

EDIT:

OK, so, from my testing (checking the speed of the camera -althought, this isn't perfect because the camera changes speed depending on height, which may change from map to map), I seem to have determined that most settlement, historical or city maps are about 4 times the size of normal battle maps. Further testing and possible modding remains to be done...

[A_I]

For serious this game is just crap, almost all of the game need to be modded and all of aspects of rome 2.

There is even one GOOD thing in this game.

If we seen then Older versions of TW are better in some aspects ( and on Rome they have biggest $ to expand) if just hilarious.

This game came out in alfa version or early beta max.
14 patches came out and still game is one big pain in the ass.

And they even don`t want to give ppl tools to do it right...

FOr real mod for Rome need to rebuild almost all aspects of the game till then game is almost unplayable.

This is biggest fail of CA this game.

I just start playing in Medieval 2 and Rome 2 i put into trash where he belong.
NExt time i`m give this money to poor ppl rather than buy another of they products.

[Sir_Pee_Alot]

You can remove the Red borderlines, Dont know if you also are able to move over the borderline didn't try and cant test it now since im not home for some time.
Maybe DeI can remove it if its possible to fight over the red-lines so you got more battlefield to fight on and maneuver.

And i hope CA soon comes with different formations than one big line Ughh..

[Dresden]

Let us all pray once the DLCs are done they release the full tools

Even a true starpos editor that has full functionality would be appreciated.

[Causeless]

It's questionable whether map editing tools would allow increasing map size, though... it seems that the way maps are generated in Rome 2 is different, as now the field battle maps actually represent the campaign terrain whereas in Shogun 2 they were pre-canned.

It'd be great if there's some db table we can modify the change this, but I dunno if people have found it, or looked for it!

EDIT:

In that NTW mods, did it actually increase the battlefield size? Or was it the default sizes? Trying to investigate into this...

[Sir_Pee_Alot]

It's questionable whether map editing tools would allow increasing map size, though... it seems that the way maps are generated in Rome 2 is different, as now the field battle maps actually represent the campaign terrain whereas in Shogun 2 they were pre-canned.

It'd be great if there's some db table we can modify the change this, but I dunno if people have found it, or looked for it!

When mapping tools are released you can create your own borders on the map so you can make a big map with small area to fight in or a big area. And maybe its different with campaign maps but i believe that it still works the same.

And you already can remove the red-borderlines i only dont know if you can fight over the borders didn't try it.

[Causeless]

When mapping tools are released you can create your own borders on the map so you can make a big map with small area to fight in or a big area. And maybe its different with campaign maps but i believe that it still works the same.

And you already can remove the red-borderlines i only dont know if you can fight over the borders didn't try it.

The mods that remove the border are 100% visual, I think. Unless you've found another way?

I've tried modding the historical battles to have bigger maps, but I'm so far unsuccessful.

[Defensore]

When mapping tools are released you can create your own borders on the map so you can make a big map with small area to fight in or a big area. And maybe its different with campaign maps but i believe that it still works the same.

And you already can remove the red-borderlines i only dont know if you can fight over the borders didn't try it.

I realize they are different games, but were there map tools for NTW? Could they be adapted in some way? If there were not, I wonder how they did it.

It's questionable whether map editing tools would allow increasing map size, though... it seems that the way maps are generated in Rome 2 is different, as now the field battle maps actually represent the campaign terrain whereas in Shogun 2 they were pre-canned.

It'd be great if there's some db table we can modify the change this, but I dunno if people have found it, or looked for it!

EDIT:

In that NTW mods, did it actually increase the battlefield size? Or was it the default sizes? Trying to investigate into this...

Not sure about this, I'll see if I can find the answer for it.

[Causeless]

I tried using tED to see the similarities between Rome 2 and Shogun 2's map formats (they seem pretty similar), but shogun 2's maps seem hard-coded to be 2048 in size... I hope the same doesn't apply to Rome 2...

EDIT:

Unless I change it manually outside the editor by editing the xml files. Then it seems to work - however, I cannot seem to achieve the same with Rome 2. More testing will be needed.

EDIT... AGAIN:

Hard limit of 2048 max in shogun 2. Can go smaller, but not bigger...

STOP WITH THE EDITS ALREADY:

Rome 2 has historical maps that are bigger than 2048, however. Perhaps a change to the engine? Or maybe historical battles are a special case? Hmm...

EDIT... :

Seems Shogun 2 does have historical maps that are 4096 in size... perhaps it's a limitation to custom battles. Anyway it's almost 4 AM here and I'm exhausted. Research another time...

[Defensore]

I tried using tED to see the similarities between Rome 2 and Shogun 2's map formats (they seem pretty similar), but shogun 2's maps seem hard-coded to be 2048 in size... I hope the same doesn't apply to Rome 2...

EDIT:

Unless I change it manually outside the editor by editing the xml files. Then it seems to work - however, I cannot seem to achieve the same with Rome 2. More testing will be needed.

EDIT... AGAIN:

Hard limit of 2048 max in shogun 2. Can go smaller, but not bigger...

STOP WITH THE EDITS ALREADY:

Rome 2 has historical maps that are bigger than 2048, however. Perhaps a change to the engine? Or maybe historical battles are a special case? Hmm...

EDIT... :

Seems Shogun 2 does have historical maps that are 4096 in size... perhaps it's a limitation to custom battles. Anyway it's almost 4 AM here and I'm exhausted. Research another time...

Definitely most interesting! I'll still trying to get a hold on one of NTW3 modders to ask about their map sizes.