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I just played a massive battle on Hard difficulty against the Vampire Counts. I had something like three units of halberds, four units of swordsmen, four units of crossbows, two units of Free Company, two units of Flagellants, and an Arch Lector. Plus some garrison troops. The AI had two full armies and one smaller one, though most of their units were low tier they had Vlad, Kemmler, a regular vamp lord, some grave guard with great weapons, and Black Knights with Lances and Barding.
I managed to win and I forgot to save the replay...
That being said, it lasted a long time (or at least felt like it). Not only that, but I never really felt like it was so much my reaction speed that mattered. I was able to bottleneck them, concentrate on a blob or two with massed crossbow fire, make good use of the Free Company, have the Arch Lector actually do something, and I was most proud of the Halberds, who basically ran about hacking down dire wolves and eventually the Black Knights with Lances too before turning to help defeat the infantry. I had to make use of the units I had an mostly my decision making was pretty good (and the map had some little nice features that helped).
It was a good battle and it felt amazing. Though this doesn't prove you wrong, necessarily. I feel that adding more map variation, for instance, would help create more battles like this. But I don't really think that the problem is necessarily battle speed, per se, as this one was quite good.
Most of my 6-8 min battles "feel" longer-due to the intensity of clicking. @Fredrin@FunkyDexter (and to @Canuovea last point) call it right, by saying longer battles are preferred as a consequence of game play (including battle pace).
I DONT want them to "feel long" or to be long for the sake of being long, and just issuing a few orders and sit back and watch @Canuovea no replay necessary I believe you, with a big portion of forces being missle units and the opponent having **** load of low tier units, tend to last a decent time-and with vamps especially which low tiers are really slow.
I had a similar battle and composition, but >2x forces and it lasted 18min. Pace was good but limiting..I had defensive position on a hill and there were not many fast units on either side and a boat load of low tier vamps with a handful of elite units and a few monster and Heros.
Point is I want all my epic battles (the only ones I really fight )to be of similar pace and not be reduced to limiting army compositions to get close to the "feeling" of the pace I (and many others) prefer.
No doubts here, that sounds like an absolute epic! And probably quite a long one, to be sure. But also fair to say an exception to the rule, even when cherry-picking those big ol showdowns as fellow autoresolve connoisseur @hendo1592 appears to
Any campaign is gonna throw up a few instances when huge numbers and army composition combine to produce a marathon battle. I relish them, personally, but only because it's a rare instance that I feel like something epic just happened rather than the usual "well, that's that I guess" after 8 or so mins.
I would say that the benefit of variable battle speeds, especially if introduced by the devs on a sliding scale in a similar way to battle and campaign difficulty, is that you can change them on the fly.
I.e. If I'm playing VC and know I'm going to be fighting a whole lot of really big battles against another VC faction, I would happily knock battle speed up a notch for a few battles. Tarpit vs tarpit is the ultimate snorefest, but it's actually quite rare that that battle type will dominate any one campaign. Variable speeds would provide quite a neat solution to that situation as well as allowing people a default that they're happier with.
It doesn't address the underlying problem of overall tactical gameplay being a touch on the shallow side, but it at least gives people the option.
I seriously thought I was going to lose that one. The army was clearly close to chain routing moments before the VC units all disintegrated...
Either way, I felt that my tactical choices were quite important for that battle... but you're right, it wasn't a battle of two similarly sized armies (although I didn't have any particularly high tier units either, and the Arch Lector had no points in the red tree at all).
That all being said, I see the point, but I don't know if such a slider would be a good idea. Not only due to splitting multiplayer community, but mainly because I simply can't see that being easy or cheap to balance. It would be far better to expand on the existing tactical depth by making maps more diverse and so forth because that way everyone benefits.
I seriously thought I was going to lose that one. The army was clearly close to chain routing moments before the VC units all disintegrated...
Either way, I felt that my tactical choices were quite important for that battle... but you're right, it wasn't a battle of two similarly sized armies (although I didn't have any particularly high tier units either, and the Arch Lector had no points in the red tree at all).
That all being said, I see the point, but I don't know if such a slider would be a good idea. Not only due to splitting multiplayer community, but mainly because I simply can't see that being easy or cheap to balance. It would be far better to expand on the existing tactical depth by making maps more diverse and so forth because that way everyone benefits.
I personally think a battle speed slider would be far less costly than going to the trouble of increasing map variety and introducing a more comprehensive suite of tactical gameplay features.
If I had to choose between the two, I'd obviously go for the latter approach, as it stands to make battles an overall more interesting and varied experience. But in the absence of that happening, I'd still welcome a few more battle speed options to give the illusion at least.
I've discussed this now with a quite a few users here and over at TWC who have a fair bit of technical hands-on experience when it comes to balancing and I have heard such mixed reports about how much extra work it might represent for CA that I don't know who to believe!
Intuitively, I want to say a bit of extra balancing work is going to be far less resource intensive than actual content creation, so there's an obvious economy as far as I can see. The truth is, only CA knows the answer to that question, which is why it's frustrating they never chip in, despite this being the most continuously raised issue, certainly in my approx 4 years of following the forums closely.
Maybe it would be less resource intensive, I'm not sure, but it would definitely be more annoying. Look at how often they tweak things with just one battle speed. And then they'd have to think about just how they intend to make the battles longer... give the units more of everything? What? And the slider increases or decreases these stats? And now you have to make sure each slider level is balanced? Or at least not totally broken? They seem to have enough trouble with this for unit sizes.
And while it may be resource intensive to create more maps (and/or give modders battle map making tools... which I think they've been intending to do), they already have been planning on making more maps (and the newer ones tend to have some interesting features). Plus it obviously benefits everyone, whereas catering to a slice of the population who complain about battle speed ignores the others who are fine with it as it stands (it gives them more options, but doesn't address something they actually want).
Maybe it would be less resource intensive, I'm not sure, but it would definitely be more annoying. Look at how often they tweak things with just one battle speed. And then they'd have to think about just how they intend to make the battles longer... give the units more of everything? What? And the slider increases or decreases these stats? And now you have to make sure each slider level is balanced? Or at least not totally broken? They seem to have enough trouble with this for unit sizes.
Honestly, while these may sound like problems to someone who (I'm assuming) has no experience in developing computer games, I doubt they'd be such a big deal to the studio that brought us this game in the first place!
And while it may be resource intensive to create more maps (and/or give modders battle map making tools... which I think they've been intending to do), they already have been planning on making more maps (and the newer ones tend to have some interesting features). Plus it obviously benefits everyone, whereas catering to a slice of the population who complain about battle speed ignores the others who are fine with it as it stands (it gives them more options, but doesn't address something they actually want).
There are a whole load of things in the past that CA has brought into the game that people didn't want, partly because they didn't know were even a thing. 3D campaign map in Rome I, gorgeous ship of the line naval battles in Empire etc They all improved the game though.
There are other instances, like Regional Occupation, when it's fair to say it's worth an alternative being provided because it will impact so much (or not, as it transpired) on people's enjoyment of the game.
People can get far too possessive about the allocation of dev resources when they have little to no idea exactly how those resources are allocated. There's good reason to believe that a speed slider would have little to no impact on the dev team making new maps, units or most of the other content associated with DLC. Which is why I find it a bit narrow-minded when people are so quick to write off quite reasonable requests to the devs because it doesn't affect them personally (not necessarily putting you in that category when I say that).
Battle pacing is an issue, like many many others that CA have addressed in the past. It's also one that comes up every time a game is released and every time a patch changes it significantly. It's time they put it to bed!
Well, maybe its just that I'm fine with the battle pacing. Its slower than Rome 1 for sure (and 2? Maybe...), slower than Attila sometimes, and way slower than Shogun 2.
And we got our other option for Regional Occupation through mods, you might say we're getting that through mods here too. But you are right, everyone complains about battle speed for each game each time. Its hard to know why CA hasn't bothered with a "slider" yet for sure, and we'll never know unless they say so, so we're left with speculation.
i'm going to blame it on multiplayer, because you would have to have a different multiplayer bracket for every stop on the slider unless they were to lock it
boyfights you are always here to confirmate every spark of originality or reason burns or acid bruises anyone, stop your gladiator love for agressions.
Yea even if it's just starting w/ two alternate battle pace setting (2 settings total) would not be that crazy, such as slider-basically would be some type of algorithm involved that would be tricky and as you said it would split the community up quite a bit-but its a pretty big community lol.
@Fredrin you got me wrong..I don't cherry pick just the huge battles, I just meant the epic battles are why I play total war series. I'll play the occasional smaller one (of older titles-no need to cut army size to have a quick game in TWW) and the majority of campaigns'.
But I play a lot of custom and multiplayer with friends that try to build army compositions- not resulting in a 5-8 min battle.
Im no pro at the technical stuff, but they are going to have to add a setting and some content imo (nothing crazy just some added features-they have already been changing features since release + and some features they already have -just needs tweaking)
Whatever they do, they should do it, I think as a consequence of doing so would result in more possibilities of uniqueness between races/factions, including making ffa style possible.
@Canuovea The mods don't do it for me, modders are talented and hardworking but not a huge company like CA.
Proper combat mod would be the best if I had to choose but even that one, the end result testing 5matches (switching from mod to vannila-same army comp-same strategy, and it appears like the mod added playing time ---only in the 1st stages of battle while the armies advance to meet/counter after that, take a minute or two and the battles run the exact way
At least it adds that added time in the beginning to do whatever creative tactic you have there..then it's clash, overpower, annnnnd done 3-6min later. --and no I am not that good-its just that quick,
BUT sometimes it does "feel longer" but then my fingers can't stop doing a 1hr morse code message... ...I don't know morse code
So out of almost 900,000 people who own TWW, about 12k are subscribed to the Proper Combat mod. There are always going to be people who want a certain aspect of the game to be different in some way, but in this particular case, I don't see nearly enough demand to justify the amount of work it would take to implement multiple battle speeds.
I think the complexity of adding an adjustable slider is being vastly underestimated by anyone suggesting it. Can anyone name a single RTS that runs at variable speeds? I don't play very many of them, but I've never seen one that did that.
So out of almost 900,000 people who own TWW, about 12k are subscribed to the Proper Combat mod. There are always going to be people who want a certain aspect of the game to be different in some way, but in this particular case, I don't see nearly enough demand to justify the amount of work it would take to implement multiple battle speeds.
I think the complexity of adding an adjustable slider is being vastly underestimated by anyone suggesting it. Can anyone name a single RTS that runs at variable speeds? I don't play very many of them, but I've never seen one that did that.
You completly leave every other mod, wich has a slower pace, out of your calculation, including Radious mod, wich has the largest userbase amongst all mods.
I think the complexity of adding an adjustable slider is being vastly underestimated by anyone suggesting it. Can anyone name a single RTS that runs at variable speeds? I don't play very many of them, but I've never seen one that did that.
The ones that have a speed slider, like Warcraft3 just speed up or slow down the entire game, just like you can already do in TW, only they don't mute the music and the SFX.
Maybe that's what CA should do? Have music and sound play normally in slo-motion?
I think the complexity of adding an adjustable slider is being vastly underestimated by anyone suggesting it. Can anyone name a single RTS that runs at variable speeds? I don't play very many of them, but I've never seen one that did that.
The ones that have a speed slider, like Warcraft3 just speed up or slow down the entire game, just like you can already do in TW, only they don't mute the music and the SFX.
Maybe that's what CA should do? Have music and sound play normally in slo-motion?
Hmm, it would look more like Medieval 2 that way...
I think the complexity of adding an adjustable slider is being vastly underestimated by anyone suggesting it. Can anyone name a single RTS that runs at variable speeds? I don't play very many of them, but I've never seen one that did that.
The ones that have a speed slider, like Warcraft3 just speed up or slow down the entire game, just like you can already do in TW, only they don't mute the music and the SFX.
Maybe that's what CA should do? Have music and sound play normally in slo-motion?
Wouldn´t give you more itme to maneuver and wouldn´t improve the atmosphere...
I think the complexity of adding an adjustable slider is being vastly underestimated by anyone suggesting it. Can anyone name a single RTS that runs at variable speeds? I don't play very many of them, but I've never seen one that did that.
The ones that have a speed slider, like Warcraft3 just speed up or slow down the entire game, just like you can already do in TW, only they don't mute the music and the SFX.
Maybe that's what CA should do? Have music and sound play normally in slo-motion?
Wouldn´t give you more itme to maneuver and wouldn´t improve the atmosphere...
You already have plenty of time to maneuver as is. Unless you're always playing punch-drunk or something.
I recently started Warhammer and I agree battle speed is too fast for me. Is there a mod that reduces just the kill rate? Most mods I found effect other things which I don'want
You already have plenty of time to maneuver as is. Unless you're always playing punch-drunk or something.
Right because the battlelines disolve like 2 minutes after they meet... Once the battle started, there´s not much room for doing much.
If you need two minutes to move cavalry to the other side of the battle line perhaps you just need practise...
Maybe some of us just expect more from this game than 2 minutes if fight and every maneuver and tactic is just reduced to moving cav to the other side of the battle line... Where is the epic-battle in this?
You already have plenty of time to maneuver as is. Unless you're always playing punch-drunk or something.
Right because the battlelines disolve like 2 minutes after they meet... Once the battle started, there´s not much room for doing much.
If you need two minutes to move cavalry to the other side of the battle line perhaps you just need practise...
Maybe some of us just expect more from this game than 2 minutes if fight and every maneuver and tactic is just reduced to moving cav to the other side of the battle line... Where is the epic-battle in this?
So you want the battle lines to be clashing for 4 minutes instead of 2, and then do the exact same thing anyway?
MarcusLivius: You are indeed a lord of entitlement.
i can't wrap my head around that either, if your units are in position to win then combat should be decisive (like it is), and if your units are out of position then you should lose (like you do)
i don't see how making line troops tougher with less killing power makes things more "epic" and i certainly don't want to see CA waste their time rebalancing every single unit to make that an option when mods and modding tools are readily available for something so perfectly suited to mods
boyfights you are always here to confirmate every spark of originality or reason burns or acid bruises anyone, stop your gladiator love for agressions.
Funny that people think that making engagements take longer to resolve will make things more strategic when it does the exact opposite, you can blunder as much as you want because you'll always get ample time to correct bad deployment.
What's epic about two battlelines futiley slash and hack at each other for extended periods of time? Even Med2 at least had combat resolve fast.
For me if battles would last at least 2minutes more I would be able to enjoy more the hard work CA did creating this great game but would like to keep everything vanilla as possible.
I remember CA trying to show off the battles close-up on the unit animations, but they couldn't do that and play the game at the same time because things were moving too fast.
My objection to the increasing pace of TW battles is how tactics are destroyed and only a handful of excessively strong ones remain, centred on flanking. Historically, the advent of the chariot transformed warfare in both the west and the east. But strength invites challenge and the response was to develop means of countering highly manoeuvrable opponents, none of which exist in TW:WH but are in Shogun 2 and less so in Rome 2 and Attila. This is a trend that has been going on for some time and there has been no course correction. Units simply kill each other far too quickly, missile units have ridiculously short range(previously their range was such that fast unit moving to flank had to do so out of range, far enough that you could tell when a charge would begin) and you can't rotate units so there's no point having reserves.
I remember CA trying to show off the battles close-up on the unit animations, but they couldn't do that and play the game at the same time because things were moving too fast.
My objection to the increasing pace of TW battles is how tactics are destroyed and only a handful of excessively strong ones remain, centred on flanking. Historically, the advent of the chariot transformed warfare in both the west and the east. But strength invites challenge and the response was to develop means of countering highly manoeuvrable opponents, none of which exist in TW:WH but are in Shogun 2 and less so in Rome 2 and Attila. This is a trend that has been going on for some time and there has been no course correction. Units simply kill each other far too quickly, missile units have ridiculously short range(previously their range was such that fast unit moving to flank had to do so out of range, far enough that you could tell when a charge would begin) and you can't rotate units so there's no point having reserves.
Totally agree.
And I revert to an earlier point which is that time pressure is a great way of injecting challenge into a battle system which is lacking enough core tactical features to make it all that engaging in the first place.
One major drawback I've experienced is that there is not a great deal of variation between battles. You can tell this from the frequent refrain of the "fast action crowd", which usually goes along the lines of "how long do you need to maneuver your cavalry round the back, you narbs"? As if the old Hammer & Anvil is the only effective tactic in the whole history of warfare. Sadly, due to the way battles are currently designed and the ridiculously brief time your lines are actually engaged, this is pretty much the case in modern TW games.
I have won battle after battle on multiplayer - whatever faction I'm playing as - not even giving a moment's thought to varying my troop disposition at the beginning of the battle, according to terrain, enemy army comp, whatever. The same vague approach and the requisite amount of micro wins you the battle every time, or until you meet someone who has finessed that same general formula to a greater degree. Not as true at very competitive levels of MP, which I can't claim to compete, but certainly true at mid-level MP and battles against the AI.
It is a problem that feels like it started back with Shogun II and has become, on average, progressively worse, to the point that battles these days feel like highly condensed, over-simplified clickfests that require an absolute bare minimum of creative tactical thought.
Some people love them for the above reasons (which I suppose they would choose to phrase a little differently ) and I respect that. But in my opinion, they are very repetitious, mechanical and short-lived affair which don't even allow you time to take advantage of their main selling point, which is their pretty graphics.
Speed options would probably free up a bit more time for creative maneuvering and more complex tactics, but ultimately it would be more satisfying if battles lasted longer because we had more things to think about and more fine control of unit commands and formations.
"Epic battles" are the series' major USP, but ironically they seem to be getting increasingly less epic with every iteration!
It was noticeable in Shogun 2, but the setting justified it. They didn't use shields, Japan is a very hilly country and heavy armour was uncommon. Force conserving tactics were possible I guess because the almost uniform unit roster across all factions. In Rome 2 I didn't notice the pace change until a lot later because I was playing as Rome and it was expected that thwarting early flanking attempts by non-Latin cultures would mean a swift win afterwards. Then I tried Iceni and I'm like "the hell? My units are made of paper and keep routing". So it's kind of crept up on me and apparently some at CA, going by how the show case battles went. Because of that, I'm struggling to believe that the current pacing is intentional.
Funny that people think that making engagements take longer to resolve will make things more strategic when it does the exact opposite, you can blunder as much as you want because you'll always get ample time to correct bad deployment.
What's epic about two battlelines futiley slash and hack at each other for extended periods of time? Even Med2 at least had combat resolve fast.
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I just played a massive battle on Hard difficulty against the Vampire Counts. I had something like three units of halberds, four units of swordsmen, four units of crossbows, two units of Free Company, two units of Flagellants, and an Arch Lector. Plus some garrison troops. The AI had two full armies and one smaller one, though most of their units were low tier they had Vlad, Kemmler, a regular vamp lord, some grave guard with great weapons, and Black Knights with Lances and Barding.
I managed to win and I forgot to save the replay...
That being said, it lasted a long time (or at least felt like it). Not only that, but I never really felt like it was so much my reaction speed that mattered. I was able to bottleneck them, concentrate on a blob or two with massed crossbow fire, make good use of the Free Company, have the Arch Lector actually do something, and I was most proud of the Halberds, who basically ran about hacking down dire wolves and eventually the Black Knights with Lances too before turning to help defeat the infantry. I had to make use of the units I had an mostly my decision making was pretty good (and the map had some little nice features that helped).
It was a good battle and it felt amazing. Though this doesn't prove you wrong, necessarily. I feel that adding more map variation, for instance, would help create more battles like this. But I don't really think that the problem is necessarily battle speed, per se, as this one was quite good.
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3 · Disagree AgreeI DONT want them to "feel long" or to be long for the sake of being long, and just issuing a few orders and sit back and watch
@Canuovea no replay necessary I believe you, with a big portion of forces being missle units and the opponent having **** load of low tier units, tend to last a decent time-and with vamps especially which low tiers are really slow.
I had a similar battle and composition, but >2x forces and it lasted 18min. Pace was good but limiting..I had defensive position on a hill and there were not many fast units on either side
Point is I want all my epic battles (the only ones I really fight
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1 · Disagree AgreeNo doubts here, that sounds like an absolute epic! And probably quite a long one, to be sure. But also fair to say an exception to the rule, even when cherry-picking those big ol showdowns as fellow autoresolve connoisseur @hendo1592 appears to
Any campaign is gonna throw up a few instances when huge numbers and army composition combine to produce a marathon battle. I relish them, personally, but only because it's a rare instance that I feel like something epic just happened rather than the usual "well, that's that I guess" after 8 or so mins.
I would say that the benefit of variable battle speeds, especially if introduced by the devs on a sliding scale in a similar way to battle and campaign difficulty, is that you can change them on the fly.
I.e. If I'm playing VC and know I'm going to be fighting a whole lot of really big battles against another VC faction, I would happily knock battle speed up a notch for a few battles. Tarpit vs tarpit is the ultimate snorefest, but it's actually quite rare that that battle type will dominate any one campaign. Variable speeds would provide quite a neat solution to that situation as well as allowing people a default that they're happier with.
It doesn't address the underlying problem of overall tactical gameplay being a touch on the shallow side, but it at least gives people the option.
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1 · Disagree AgreeEither way, I felt that my tactical choices were quite important for that battle... but you're right, it wasn't a battle of two similarly sized armies (although I didn't have any particularly high tier units either, and the Arch Lector had no points in the red tree at all).
That all being said, I see the point, but I don't know if such a slider would be a good idea. Not only due to splitting multiplayer community, but mainly because I simply can't see that being easy or cheap to balance. It would be far better to expand on the existing tactical depth by making maps more diverse and so forth because that way everyone benefits.
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0 · Disagree AgreeIf I had to choose between the two, I'd obviously go for the latter approach, as it stands to make battles an overall more interesting and varied experience. But in the absence of that happening, I'd still welcome a few more battle speed options to give the illusion at least.
I've discussed this now with a quite a few users here and over at TWC who have a fair bit of technical hands-on experience when it comes to balancing and I have heard such mixed reports about how much extra work it might represent for CA that I don't know who to believe!
Intuitively, I want to say a bit of extra balancing work is going to be far less resource intensive than actual content creation, so there's an obvious economy as far as I can see. The truth is, only CA knows the answer to that question, which is why it's frustrating they never chip in, despite this being the most continuously raised issue, certainly in my approx 4 years of following the forums closely.
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1 · Disagree AgreeAnd while it may be resource intensive to create more maps (and/or give modders battle map making tools... which I think they've been intending to do), they already have been planning on making more maps (and the newer ones tend to have some interesting features). Plus it obviously benefits everyone, whereas catering to a slice of the population who complain about battle speed ignores the others who are fine with it as it stands (it gives them more options, but doesn't address something they actually want).
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0 · Disagree AgreeThere are a whole load of things in the past that CA has brought into the game that people didn't want, partly because they didn't know were even a thing. 3D campaign map in Rome I, gorgeous ship of the line naval battles in Empire etc They all improved the game though.
There are other instances, like Regional Occupation, when it's fair to say it's worth an alternative being provided because it will impact so much (or not, as it transpired) on people's enjoyment of the game.
People can get far too possessive about the allocation of dev resources when they have little to no idea exactly how those resources are allocated. There's good reason to believe that a speed slider would have little to no impact on the dev team making new maps, units or most of the other content associated with DLC. Which is why I find it a bit narrow-minded when people are so quick to write off quite reasonable requests to the devs because it doesn't affect them personally (not necessarily putting you in that category when I say that).
Battle pacing is an issue, like many many others that CA have addressed in the past. It's also one that comes up every time a game is released and every time a patch changes it significantly. It's time they put it to bed!
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1 · Disagree AgreeAnd we got our other option for Regional Occupation through mods, you might say we're getting that through mods here too. But you are right, everyone complains about battle speed for each game each time. Its hard to know why CA hasn't bothered with a "slider" yet for sure, and we'll never know unless they say so, so we're left with speculation.
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0 · Disagree Agreeor reason burns or acid bruises anyone,
stop your gladiator love for agressions.
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0 · Disagree Agree@Fredrin you got me wrong..I don't cherry pick just the huge battles, I just meant the epic battles are why I play total war series. I'll play the occasional smaller one (of older titles-no need to cut army size to have a quick game in TWW) and the majority of campaigns'.
But I play a lot of custom and multiplayer with friends that try to build army compositions- not resulting in a 5-8 min battle.
Im no pro at the technical stuff, but they are going to have to add a setting and some content imo (nothing crazy just some added features-they have already been changing features since release + and some features they already have -just needs tweaking)
Whatever they do, they should do it, I think as a consequence of doing so would result in more possibilities of uniqueness between races/factions, including making ffa style possible.
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0 · Disagree AgreeProper combat mod would be the best if I had to choose but even that one, the end result testing 5matches (switching from mod to vannila-same army comp-same strategy, and it appears like the mod added playing time
---only in the 1st stages of battle while the armies advance to meet/counter after that, take a minute or two and the battles run the exact way
At least it adds that added time in the beginning to do whatever creative tactic you have there..then it's clash, overpower, annnnnd done 3-6min later. --and no I am not that good-its just that quick,
BUT sometimes it does "feel longer" but then my fingers can't stop doing a 1hr morse code message...
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0 · Disagree AgreeI think the complexity of adding an adjustable slider is being vastly underestimated by anyone suggesting it. Can anyone name a single RTS that runs at variable speeds? I don't play very many of them, but I've never seen one that did that.
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2 · Disagree AgreeThat being said, I'm not sure the numbers are necessarily part of the main argument here.
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0 · Disagree AgreeThe ones that have a speed slider, like Warcraft3 just speed up or slow down the entire game, just like you can already do in TW, only they don't mute the music and the SFX.
Maybe that's what CA should do? Have music and sound play normally in slo-motion?
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0 · Disagree Agreei don't see how making line troops tougher with less killing power makes things more "epic" and i certainly don't want to see CA waste their time rebalancing every single unit to make that an option when mods and modding tools are readily available for something so perfectly suited to mods
or reason burns or acid bruises anyone,
stop your gladiator love for agressions.
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0 · Disagree AgreeWhat's epic about two battlelines futiley slash and hack at each other for extended periods of time? Even Med2 at least had combat resolve fast.
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0 · Disagree AgreeMy objection to the increasing pace of TW battles is how tactics are destroyed and only a handful of excessively strong ones remain, centred on flanking. Historically, the advent of the chariot transformed warfare in both the west and the east. But strength invites challenge and the response was to develop means of countering highly manoeuvrable opponents, none of which exist in TW:WH but are in Shogun 2 and less so in Rome 2 and Attila. This is a trend that has been going on for some time and there has been no course correction. Units simply kill each other far too quickly, missile units have ridiculously short range(previously their range was such that fast unit moving to flank had to do so out of range, far enough that you could tell when a charge would begin) and you can't rotate units so there's no point having reserves.
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2 · Disagree AgreeAnd I revert to an earlier point which is that time pressure is a great way of injecting challenge into a battle system which is lacking enough core tactical features to make it all that engaging in the first place.
One major drawback I've experienced is that there is not a great deal of variation between battles. You can tell this from the frequent refrain of the "fast action crowd", which usually goes along the lines of "how long do you need to maneuver your cavalry round the back, you narbs"? As if the old Hammer & Anvil is the only effective tactic in the whole history of warfare. Sadly, due to the way battles are currently designed and the ridiculously brief time your lines are actually engaged, this is pretty much the case in modern TW games.
I have won battle after battle on multiplayer - whatever faction I'm playing as - not even giving a moment's thought to varying my troop disposition at the beginning of the battle, according to terrain, enemy army comp, whatever. The same vague approach and the requisite amount of micro wins you the battle every time, or until you meet someone who has finessed that same general formula to a greater degree. Not as true at very competitive levels of MP, which I can't claim to compete, but certainly true at mid-level MP and battles against the AI.
It is a problem that feels like it started back with Shogun II and has become, on average, progressively worse, to the point that battles these days feel like highly condensed, over-simplified clickfests that require an absolute bare minimum of creative tactical thought.
Some people love them for the above reasons (which I suppose they would choose to phrase a little differently
Speed options would probably free up a bit more time for creative maneuvering and more complex tactics, but ultimately it would be more satisfying if battles lasted longer because we had more things to think about and more fine control of unit commands and formations.
"Epic battles" are the series' major USP, but ironically they seem to be getting increasingly less epic with every iteration!
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