R2TW is too conquest-oriented

[Carlucio]

I want my short campaign back.

[Fabricus]

I feel your pain, O.P...whenever I have expressed similar thoughts I get a bunch of posts saying...bro, do you even SEGA ?

[Niccolo Machiavelli]

Rome2 is more conquest-oriented simply because so many features that gave earlier TW games more depth in noncombat areas were chopped off. But yes I agree, to use the phrase "well it's Total War!" will inevitably doom the franchise because there's only so much you can do in such a game that is limited to fighting battles, killing enemies and taking over stuff.

I think at this point, games like Eu4 and whatever have already shown their competitive edge because TW as been shying increasing from this arena. What CA should have realize was that this would push Total War into those areas and compete with these games even more directly. But I can't help that CA is just too reactionary and too short-sighted to appreciate such things.

What exactly were these features that have been cut off in your opinion? Having played all TW titles since shogun, I must say that this is the least conquest oriented game in the series thus far. In my current modded beta 2 campaign on legendary as rome, multiple factions wanted to become my client state, I've been offered (and accepted) military alliances and I'm not forced to just conquer x regions and have less conquest-oriented goals than in previous titles.

Moreover, the provincial system actually makes the later stages of the game bearable (never finished a campaign except in STW, MTW and S2TW, because I knew I've won, but administering all these provinces was such a tedium I never did it).

[Jackal2233]

If you don't want to conquer, just make alliances/client states and help them expand. You'll be focusing on just the combat and none of the provincial management/etc etc, and it's quite fun.

I don't see why one would want a game where you just sit there spamming end turn without battles.

[smilydude]

I've been waiting for Total War to get deeper and strengthen its weaker aspects since forever. I get that the battles should be the main aspect and all, but honestly the battles haven't evolved much since Rome: Total War. And both the campaign map and the battles seem to have taken a step back since Rome.

The franchise seems stagnant. No good, concerted effort to improve the Total War formula, which after so many years is starting to show its age. Instead we just get shinier and shinier graphics, but lose previous important features that we had such as trading provinces (nothing pisses me off more in Rome 2 than when I have 3/4 of a province and my client state/ally swoops in and takes it and the only way for me to get it back is to kill them). Not to mention that the battles are honestly starting to feel stale now. Boring blobs, terrible A.I, small battle maps that limit tactics (which was supposed to be addressed in Rome 2... but I guess not), no incentive not to just make stacks of the same composition of elite troops, a traditional straight line formation is pretty much always the best way to go considering the limitations of men that you have, the way that units are presented limiting the way that you can setup your formation, and just... other things. Every battle ends up the same for me. At least in campaign. Although I found Shogun 2 online battles pretty satisfying at times.

Unless they actually manage to strengthen weak aspects of the game and add some depth and the removed features to the game I can't see myself still playing this franchise 10 years from now.

[nameless]

If you play the game you'll notice that in the victory conditions "Allied states" count towards your region count so no, this game is not necessarily conquest oriented because it's possible to win the game and have the other factions conquer for you.

In my Sparta campaign I allied with two juggernauts in Spain and Triballi in central Europe and that raised my region count up by about 50.

Ideally, to get cultural victory which I think is the easiest you need to ally with factions that have similar cultures to you and that makes the victory a lot easier to obtain.

So yeah, not sure why the OP is talking about conquest oriented when it is possible to do it through alliances and diplomacy.

Honestly I think the Greek/Roman states could use a boost since the Barbarians seem to have it the easiest.

[SkyTrickster]

Total War has, as the name implies, always been on the focus of war/expending. The Europa Universalis is more economy/building oriented, while war plays a lesser role there. Always has been, probably always will be. I guess they don't want to be in each others territories too much.

[Faith]

shogun 2 was a mindless steamroll as well...

[Maklodes]

To take this in a different direction: do you need to have victory conditions programmed into the game to enjoy playing your personal style which may not involve fulfillment of those victory conditions?

You could have a game with conditions other than conquest for victory. For instance, in a Barbarian Invasion-type game, you could have the West Roman Empire have a victory objective of "survive (keep Rome, Ravenna, Mediolanum, and a few other cities that you already have at the beginning) until 535 AD." The invading hordes and domestic instability mean that just holding on, rather than expansion and conquest, are challenging objectives.

However, regardless of what victory objectives are programmed, there are always going to be more potential ways of playing the game than there are victory conditions. There was one quite enjoyable Medieval II AAR I read that involved Sicily abandoning all of its starting territories and moving to Edessa, holding that one city until the end of the game against the Mongols, Timurids, and all others. That's not going to be a "victory condition."

So, I think the real question is not "do you get a cutscene saying 'You won! Go you!' if you maintain a peaceful, non-expansionist state?" but rather, "does maintaining a peaceful, non-expansionist state involve enough possibilities and challenges to be fun?" If there are ways to make being a state with limited territorial ambitions more fun to play, that's a lot more important than whether there's a victory announcement from playing that way.

UPDATE: I just realized that qqsuen's original post already made many of the same points I did. I guess I should have been paying more attention.

[Niccolo Machiavelli]

So, I think the real question is not "do you get a cutscene saying 'You won! Go you!' if you maintain a peaceful, non-expansionist state?" but rather, "does maintaining a peaceful, non-expansionist state involve enough possibilities and challenges to be fun?" If there are ways to make being a state with limited territorial ambitions more fun to play, that's a lot more important than whether there's a victory announcement from playing that way.

Exactly - In my first campaign in R2, I set myelf the goal to plant an Oak of Teiwaz in Jerusalem as Suebi, did it, was satisfied and moved to the next campaign rather than grinding through provinces for a cookie you can't even eat.

[Consul95]

Doesn't it depend on what faction you play as though?

Some are surrounded by enemies at the beginning while others have horrid diplomatic reputation, and others get by just fine on trade treaties and diplomacy.

Diplomacy is a little sketchy currently, and I kind of wish you could trade territories or citys during diplomacy as a way to end a war or as a agreement.

[TheSavage]

Creative Assembly doesn't even need to make the strategy layer of their games too complex, it only needs to be functional. For example, If there's an option between republics and empires, then create a simple and interesting mechanic that will make both choices to feel unique and special. If revolts, civil wars and the loyalty of generals are part of the game, then carefully work on a system that will truly make them relevant and fun. If client states and vassals are present in Rome 2, then make them work reasonably. The problem is that Creative Assembly just creates an in-depth illusion that doesn't exist in reality, the reason being they are too lazy to spend the necessary amount of time balancing and properly working on those features.

Exactly.
I love Paradox/EU but obviously TW is never going to have that level of strategic depth. All it needs is _some_ functional, coherent diplomatic and strategic mechanics.

I think the game would be _so_ much deeper without bring too complex if it just had:
1) coherent vassal mechanics (possibility of integration, can give territory to vassals, AI considers vassal relationship, vassal provides tribute as money, troops or food)
2) simple model for general loyalty and possibility for military rebellion.
3) representation of difficulty of integrating new territory and model for coordinated settlement revolts
4) very basic stability model... as empire grows/blobs it becomes harder to keep together
(Note #3 & #4 actually provide reasons to hold vassals)

Many of the features above were implemented reasonably well by modders in Rome 1. I'm not saying that diplomacy and stability should dominate, just that they need to be included as a factor.

[IlluminatiRex]

You are mostly right in this (although your example of the USA is a poor one since they have not conquered anyone).

I'm sure the Philippines, Native Americans in the American West, and various Caribbean Islands would love your answer.

Because actually, we did conquer those peoples.

[daelin4]

What exactly were these features that have been cut off in your opinion? Having played all TW titles since shogun, I must say that this is the least conquest oriented game in the series thus far. In my current modded beta 2 campaign on legendary as rome, multiple factions wanted to become my client state, I've been offered (and accepted) military alliances and I'm not forced to just conquer x regions and have less conquest-oriented goals than in previous titles.

Generals in games like RTW had longer lists of traits, and they weren't like simple ones that gave one effect, they could be multiple effects per trait. Management of settlements is heavily streamlined because effects like unrest and income are province-wide; you don't have unrest issues at just Pella, it's all across the province that Pella is part of. It's like they don't want local issues to crop up so they spread it out to larger parts of the map.

I've played multiple campaign and there are cases where the AI starts off declaring war right off the bat, and cases where they do the exact opposite and the campaign seems very passive. I do not now if mods are influencing this, as that depends on the mods themselves.

In the end though there are a lot of things I see in this game that really could work if more stuff was added into them, like more dynamic effects between factions than just war, trade, and allies and going to war because of your ally. War coordination feels like ordering someone rather than bargaining, and manipualtive because you can order them to attack somewhere far off while you focus on issues closer to home and exploit the resulting scenario.

[adrastea]

Paradox handles their battles in a way I don't like, but it's in order to avoid instantaneous flickers on your screen when an enemy army clashes with your own. They stretch the battles over days in game and a Total War system could very well use a similar system but in a different way.

Let's say you see the Etruscan army marching towards Rome and, because sieges are painfully repetitive and you probably wont be able to make peace with the Ertuscans before they arrive, you decide the best course is to move to intercept and hope you get the tactical land advantage because you are taking the initiative. The armies "lock" together when you move into each others "area of reach" - the little red and yellow circles you see now around your armies. Because armies are limited compared to Paradox games, the game automatically freezes/ slows down to let you know that your army is in the preparation phase of battle. Say this was any other battle and it was on a part of the map you weren't focused on, the camera pans to the battle or there is a little flash on your minimap to give you some notice that your army will soon be in a battle.

This lock then lasts a span of days - 10 for example. The first 4 days are spent preparing camp, sorting out equipment, generals making battle plans and scouting the area, etc. I don't know the actual process but I assume there was a delay or so between when armies met and when they actually fought, so this isn't far-fetched. The battle then starts as any normal battle, you fight, you kill the Etruscan army and then when you come back to the campaign screen you are on the same day you started the battle on. This way you don't miss any diplomatic prompts, other details, etc. Then comes the closing phase when the winning army is locked in place for 4-5 days to let the losing army retreat (ie. what we get now in TBS when the losers run away), while your army is cleaning up the dead, looting, breaking camp, taking care of casualties, etc.

You have a solution to the issue of time - you wont miss anything, and it also simulates very well the process that would've actually happened. The preparation time also allows time for you to reinforce if you wish, or the enmy to do so, although the army would have to be very close to travel enough distance in 4 days (using forced march perhaps?...) These are very minor design issues. I can't really think of a major one that actually prevents the transition to RTS, although I'm hoping someone points one out other than "but its not Total War anymore".

Am I correct in understanding that in this model "one day" is the rate time progresses on the campaign map, like in EU? If so this model does seem to work, although I'm still not sure how to handle several battles happening at the same day at different places. The only thing I can think of is to put other battles "on hold" from starting until the battle player is fighting is over.

I was also thinking it may be more easier to divide the campaign map into turn-based phase and real time phase. For example the game starts with a turn-based diplomacy and management phase, and once you finish that the real time military action phase starts, which lasts for one season. Once that ends, the next turn-based diplomacy/management phase comes and so on.

[Coleus]

I play TW because I like fighting battles. I play Civ V because I like running an economy.

A game with the combined depth of the above would be nice if I had the time to purely play games. I hear what you're saying though, OP.

[Maelbox]

Am I correct in understanding that in this model "one day" is the rate time progresses on the campaign map, like in EU? If so this model does seem to work, although I'm still not sure how to handle several battles happening at the same day at different places. The only thing I can think of is to put other battles "on hold" from starting until the battle player is fighting is over.

I was also thinking it may be more easier to divide the campaign map into turn-based phase and real time phase. For example the game starts with a turn-based diplomacy and management phase, and once you finish that the real time military action phase starts, which lasts for one season. Once that ends, the next turn-based diplomacy/management phase comes and so on.

Essentially it is the same as any Paradox game with a few key differences unique to Total War (eg. no region tiles).

What a lot of people seem to not understand about real-time systems is that the "real-time" is a game illusion. That is to say, you have to have turns within a RTS but they are so small (ie. one day), that it seems as though there are no turns at all. The real issue is as what you brought up: handling multiple battles in one "turn" (day), including both player vs AI and AI vs AI.

Player vs AI is less of a problem. Let's say you have two armies instead of one. The first is moving to intercept the Etruscan invaders and the second is moving to attack a Syracusan force. Now theoretically speaking if you entered the "preparatory" phase of battle on the same day (ie. Legion 1 and Legion 2 both attack their respective targets on the 25th of August, 240BCE) then you would also enter the battle phase on the same day (29th of August). The system assigns you a battle to address first randomly, doesn't really matter but we'll say Legion 1 was the first battle you had to deal with, and you fight it on the map and win. Then after returning to the campaign map it is still the 29th of August and no turn has passed. The camera then pans over to Legion 2 and you must address that battle as well.

AI vs AI is a little trickier as battles can't start and end on the same day the way it does for the player because the smallest turn time is 1 day. Therefore, the AI battle phase needs to be stretched over a whole day. So say for example you notice some Macedonians attacking some Illyrians on the 25th of August. They are "locked" together (the preparatory phase) for 4 days until the day ticks over to the 29th and suddenly the two little army men / symbols change to to little army dudes fighitng it out. This animation lasts for the entire day until the next day ticks over (30th). You then see the result of the battle - the Illyrians are fleeing away while the Macedonians are locked down for 3 or 4 more days clearing the battlefield, looting, healing casualties, etc. During the battle phase you can't interact with either army even if you are close enough to do so.

This has so far been the only really icky issue with a RTS model that I've so far seen raised, but it looks like with a little problem-solving the issue can be relatively smoothed out.