How To Fix Thrones of Britannia

[Malcolm]

Hi all.

I played TOB for the first time the other day. I was impressed by a lot of what I saw - the campaign map is a massive improvement on any total war game I have played, the siege maps were great, titles are finally making a comeback - the list goes on.

There was a lot that I thought they haven't got right yet, so I thought I would put forward a few suggestions on how they might "fix" TOB and see what everyone else thinks.

Now, I'm from Scotland and I was playing as Circenn so a few of the points will be based specifically on that faction but I'd be interested to know if there are other issues with factions which are similar.

And so we begin:

1 - (A small point) Get rid of the Stone of Scone missions for Circenn.

These are really silly, I got told that rumours the stone was in some random territory in the south of England and that I should go and capture that settlement. I mean, why is it missing? The whole story line just seems pointless. It would be much better to just have this as a Stone of Scone perk for the faction.

2 - Please change the names of units!

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Again focussing on Circenn, they use the word "Alban" before the units. Alban doesn't mean anything (other than possibly a cute name for "small Scotland"). Instead just go and google "Scottish" in Gaelic and put that in, for example rather than "Alban Spearmen" it could be "Spearmen Albanach".

Don't get me started on the Strat Clut unit names. I mean, who thought calling them "Welsh Spearmen" was a good idea?! A simple fix for this would be calling them "Cumbric Spearmen" or "Brythonic Spearmen".

And that comes neatly onto the next fix...

3 - Change "Welsh Kingdoms" to "Cumbric Kingdoms"

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

If any of you have ever studied this period of history (as I did at University in Scotland), you will understand that this makes waaaay more sense than "Welsh Kingdoms" - which makes almost no sense.

Now for the bigger changes...

4 - Areas of Recruitment

Each region should contain different areas of recruitment. It just makes no sense that as soon as you conquer an enemy province, you can recruit the exact same units you could at home. It makes no sense.

Each region should give you units depending on what culture that region predominantly is. Below is an example of how that might look if Circenn conquered a "Welsh" (God help me ) region:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

This would make the composition of armies far more interesting if the units were specific to certain regions. Conquering certain provinces could also unlock unique hybrid units... just a thought.

5 - Nobility & Titles

Really glad to see titles making a comeback but I think they just aren't quite there yet so here is my fix.

Change Governers to "High Nobility" or something like that. Have them unlocked so they can act as generals in armies as well. Instead of being called Governers, they could receive titles such as "Lord", "Earl", "Mormaer" and so on depending on where the title is. This could be shown in the characters details panel (like this one below)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

If you wanted to take it even further you could have a specific banner for each "high nobility" general unit in battle, like the one shown below...

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

This would mean that you would have nobles from a specific region, controlling an army that consists of units from that region. Army composition would be waay more interesting and fun.

You could even introduce missions that appear - being specific to certain High Nobles and the lands they want, like this wee example below:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

I thought that faction management became a bit boring and tiresome. And while titles being there are a step in the right direction, it would be more immersive if these characters could control armies from their regions.

6 - Campaign Map AI

This one is simple. It needs tweaking. Allies don't seem at all fussed to suddenly wage war against you.

7 - Bring Back Ambushes!

I know that CA said hardly anyone played ambushes but that's largely down to the fact that the campaign map wasn't making it that attractive an option. In TOB with the much closer map, ambushes would be a really useful tool, particularly with armies going through mountain passes and things like that.

Maybe they could even make it a perk that a general gets, like this example below:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

And before you say, "but ambushes weren't really a thing back then"... they were.

8 - Time Penalty When Moving To Ships

This one is pretty simple. If you are transferring your men into a fleet, there should be an amount of turns you have to wait in the settlement, depending on the size of the army, before you can set sail. It's just a bit mental being able to sail off into the horizon with an enormous army instantly.

9 - Better Battle Maps

This has been a problem for ages. Not sure why battle maps are so boring and featureless but it needs to change. There have been some improvements, with some kind of impassable marshland appearing on battle maps in Ireland but the overwhelming majority of maps have absolutely no obstacles to get around apart from a gentle hill and some trees. It's not realistic and it makes battles really repetitive.

That's it, that's all I've got for now. I'd be interested to hear if/what people agree with. I'd be even more interested to hear that CA have read this and are going to make some changes but I won't hold my breath (and I only have +1 influence right now anyway).

Thanks for sticking with it.