A followup and possible solution for my "Are battles still grindy?" thread

[Konig91]

I read most of your awesome opinions, and well taught stories, and here's my solution, maybe for a submod and I'm open for criticism.

How about we make upkeep and cost very high, or take some other decision to make battles fewer, with less stacks, but more decisive and leaving their average 45 minutes length untouched.

You'd have less battles but a lot more decisive.

[Smerka]

1 turn doesn't feel grindy to me. Usually I fight 1 big battle in a campaign, although I don't let the script spawn units by besieging, each army has artillery (The script can spawn a full stack when you besiege a major city, which probably adds to the "grindy" feel).

If you are playing 0 turn then you must expect multiple big battles during a campaign.

[Grimbold]

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...bmod-for-RS2-6

[Konig91]

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...bmod-for-RS2-6

Yes, I know about that submod, but I was proposing something a tad bit different.

1 turn doesn't feel grindy to me. Usually I fight 1 big battle in a campaign, although I don't let the script spawn units by besieging, each army has artillery (The script can spawn a full stack when you besiege a major city, which probably adds to the "grindy" feel).

If you are playing 0 turn then you must expect multiple big battles during a campaign.

I'm already playing 1 turn, without the garrison script. And I consider it a bit gamey to have artillery in every army and conquer a city on the spot, without a proper siege for 1 or 2 turns.

[dvk901]

I read most of your awesome opinions, and well taught stories, and here's my solution, maybe for a submod and I'm open for criticism.

How about we make upkeep and cost very high, or take some other decision to make battles fewer, with less stacks, but more decisive and leaving their average 45 minutes length untouched.

You'd have less battles but a lot more decisive.

Your idea is commendable...and we discussed and tested this during development. However, although this idea works fine for the player, it causes issues for the AI. And, because so many units are shared by many or all factions, raising the cost of units doesn't just hamper the player, but also the AI. The result is actually LESS of a challenge than using a more balanced cost approach.

I think the better solution could be, for the player who finds even 1-turn campaigns too much (number of battles-wise), would be to change EDU.txt to 2 or maybe even more turns to further reduce the ability of anyone (player or AI) to recruit units. This wouldn't affect the AI money-wise, but it would slow things down considerably.

As for using siege equipment and finding it 'too gamey'......which I take to mean too easy.....I would suggest using and producing these units like I do. Personally, I like having equipment in my armies, as Roman Legions always did, but I severely limit where I can recruit them, and make my armies wait for the equipment before I can send them off into battle. So even though I always play 0-turn, I slow myself down by creating 'recruitment centers' that are often specific to recruiting certain kinds of units. But this is basically 'player restraint' on my part, and not all people would want or play with such restraints.

Also, I might add that the number of battles fought, or the feeling that they become 'grindy' and too many, is often the 'fault' of play style. I don't say that as a criticism, rather, it is a function of how one plays the game.

For example, as I said, I always play 0-turn. Even so, I have never found my campaigns to be 'always grindy, and always too many battles'. Rather, because of the way I play, I find them to be very 'sporadic'.....meaning, that I may fight a whole slew of battles in a few turns, and then they will taper off or even disappear for a many turns. This is because I am not a very aggressive or expansionist player. I build economy early, I seek trade agreements and peace wherever possible, and I let the AI do its thing for quite a long time. During that time, I protect my holdings with forts and full stacks behind them that discourage the AI from attacking, and there have been times when large AI full stack armies have just sat on my borders in front of forts or my armies guarding river crossings and never did anything.

Then, at some point when I feel confident in attacking, or that the time is right, I will initiate battles (but not always) and then fight a very large number of them over a number turns as the AI faction I attacked sends everything he's got at me.
This can be pretty intense for a while, and there are times when I think I might be overrun...or actually WAS overrun...and too me this is a lot of fun. I also tend to regard these instances as truly 'one big battle' fought over a number of turns, and they are always very decisive.

I have a choice after these events...I can invade the enemy (if I feel capable), or I can retrench and allow the process to begin to develop again. The AI faction is usually in as bad a shape as I am (army-wise), so giving it a rest can allow the faction to rebuild...or, as has happened, sue for peace.

So, in summary, what I'm saying is that HOW you play can have a big impact on whether you have a lot of battles every turn, or a deluge of battles for a limited number of turns and then an interlude where you don't fight many at all.

Back in the RS1.6 days, I played a very fun campaign as the Romans where I conquered Carthage, Spain, Gaul and Greece, and then assembled 8 Legions near Constantinople in preparation for an invasion of Anatolia. Looking the mideast, I discovered that Pergamon had overrun the whole area, and owned everything from Egypt to Armenia. The Parthians held only a few far eastern regions, and Pergamon had AT LEAST 50 full stacks over there.

Undaunted, I invaded Anatolia and proceeded to fight over 50 battles in 20 turns as Pergamon called ALL of its armies to defend its territory. They even started sending troops on ships into Greece! So I really pissed them off. But once this tense time was done, and my Legions (barely) prevailed, I fought very few battles after that.

[Konig91]

Very interesting dvk, very interesting indeed. I guess it's worth mentioning I am playing with the large unit scale, and it might have an impact on things, or so I've heard. I wish I could play on huge unit scale, but for some reason unknown to man, RTW will not detect my laptop's dedicated GPU, using the integrated graphics instead.

Oh well, I guess I should change my playstyle. I am also a slow conqueror. I like to develop my economy, use diplomacy when possible, and attack at the right time, but never blitzing trough enemy territory.

[ur-Lord Tedric]

.......................I am playing with the large unit scale, and it might have an impact on things, or so I've heard. I wish I could play on huge unit scale, but for some reason unknown to man, RTW will not detect my laptop's dedicated GPU, using the integrated graphics instead.
...............

I too have always played (and did all my testing) on Large - and think it's just perfect for the scale-representation I was used to many years ago from figure gaming. It also helps with units' path-finding.

It's not that RTW won't find your Laptop's GPU - it's that RTW was written before Graphics cards and separate GPUs existed - and it knows nothing about them. It's one of the reasons that modern 'budget' PCs aren't brilliant for RTW. The best thing to do is get the fastest processor you can (single-core old style, perhaps) and simply a matched bus and 'okay' graphics card.

[Konig91]

I too have always played (and did all my testing) on Large - and think it's just perfect for the scale-representation I was used to many years ago from figure gaming. It also helps with units' path-finding.

It's not that RTW won't find your Laptop's GPU - it's that RTW was written before Graphics cards and separate GPUs existed - and it knows nothing about them. It's one of the reasons that modern 'budget' PCs aren't brilliant for RTW. The best thing to do is get the fastest processor you can (single-core old style, perhaps) and simply a matched bus and 'okay' graphics card.

I was thinking of buying a dedicated computer for RTW in the future, or maybe make one myself with second hand parts.

[ur-Lord Tedric]

I was thinking of buying a dedicated computer for RTW in the future, or maybe make one myself with second hand parts.

Well, I didn't specifically mention this - but that's exactly what I have done (with the help of my friendly local PC man). An old-style PC made from two others; with an Intel 3.0 GHz single core, merely 3 Mb of memory, a simple but good 1Mb (the smallest available now) Nvidea chip (better it seems than Radeon for RTW) and simply matched bus and chips. Most importantly a fully updated Win XP SP3.

The major thing is that it is not connected to the internet and has only Windows + RTW + RSII + just enough drivers. Starts up in only a few seconds and (well almost) never, ever crashes. It's so stable that if it ever crashes then there is actually a reason - which was great for testing.

[marcp]

Interesting read as I am about to dl RS.II and check it out. I just wanted to mention something about hardware and RTW, or rather my hardware to be exact.
I have a current model i5 base laptop for work running win7 but for gaming (I play Med2TW ,RTW and Napoleonic mostly) I use my old but updated Pavilion with dial core Athlon 4800+ cps and 4gb ram with an nvidia 1gb cheapo gp card. I run RTW in XP compatibility mode on the sp2 version of Vista (as it was the original OS for the hp machine of 2006) I find I can run the older Total War titles flawlessly and to my great joy, all on high-highest settings and have not experienced CTD's of any type really(except for Med2TW eccentricities) nor have I noticed any preference or settings issues,

The important point might be the nvidia control panel settings factoring in over windows settings alone, better to find best config etc. Also, which is important as it hampered me before I read about it here, make sure to match the campaign and battle field resolutions to your standard monitor res settings...I know that when I re installed RTW with my new gp card RTW itself did not detect the correct settings for my machine (roughly 1400X900) haven't had random CTD since.

Best O Luck!

[dvk901]

Are you using an external moniter?

[Konig91]

Are you using an external moniter?

No, it's a plain ol' laptop.