The Importance of Battle Frequency- Avoid Total war's Mistake

[bilbobaggins764]

One thing I always hated about Total war is there were way to many battles. After about 30 turns it became a choir and I would just auto resolve 95% of them. Further because armies could be created so fast battles really did not matter so long as your economy/industry was strong. You could lose multiple battles with no real impact on your realm. 

 

I hope KOH2 does not make the same mistake. Make battles fewer but more important. 

[William Blake]

Well, it is much deeper problem. It is not just amount of battles, it is about fine balance between too hard and too easy. If you just reduce number of battles, an outcome of one or two battles would be too great and will practically end a game one way or another. In a single player this would force players to reload a saved game, instead of trying to endure. But most of the time games tend to make it too easy for a player, so it is very hard not to win, but it is covered with making same repeating time consuming mechanics run over and over again, like TW battles which you can't really lose or even care to lose. 

Moreover, there is more interesting issue arising from this - how much a direct player control in a battle should be a winning factor compared to an auto resolve. Obviously you can make AI so good (even through just plain instant reaction and exact math AI can do in a blink of an eye) that player will be always too late to react in a direct control battle. But this will be too hard and no one would even play RTS battles. On the other hand, if AI is obviously too weak in RTS there will be a clear advantage to lead in a battle instead of autoresolve, which would force players to play more RTS battles just to make sure they are winning instead of waiting for auto resolve to lose.

As it appears to me, KoH2 is aimed to be very casual game in terms of average player experience, such that you won't be loosing too much too fast too hard to an AI. But given the size of the map and general grand strategy setting, I'm afraid there will be a lot of battles you will not care about and a lot of routine combat you will set on autoresolve. In fact I'm quite sure that the whole game design for KoH2 runs with an assumption that all battles are autoresolved and only in a single player you can lead a battle in a direct control as an exception, mostly as an eye candy mini-subgame kind of mechanics.

 

 

Edited November 6, 2021 by William Blake

[Vlad Dracul]

You know, I always wished the battles from KoH (which are the weakest link of the game, imho) to be more like those magnificent ones from M2TW.

Not expecting to be really that good, but definitely much better than what they are.

Afterall, half of the point and purpose of playing a medieval game is fighting on the battlefield. Auto-resolve just doesn't cut it, not for me and not for any other passionate of strategy in general, military strategy in particular. Just read the post below, to understand my point of view:

https://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?603508-Strategic-use-of-auto-resolve&p=13070618&viewfull=1#post13070618

(to be perfectly clear, it's the #10 post from that topic, right above my reply. Just in case there are problems with the link)

That's why I couldn't really enjoy games like Europa Universalis or Crusader Kings.

I'm not sayin' that the auto-resolve option shouldn't exist in the game, ofc it should exist, but I'd use it only as an emergency solution, when from various reasons (bugs, game crashes etc.) I can't fight the battles manually.

And yes, I can't see how you can manually fight the battles in multiplayer, so auto-resolve is a must there, but that's another discussion.

Edited December 3, 2021 by Vlad Dracul

[bilbobaggins764]

On 12/3/2021 at 11:54 AM, Vlad Dracul said:

You know, I always wished the battles from KoH (which are the weakest link of the game, imho) to be more like those magnificent ones from M2TW.

Not expecting to be really that good, but definitely much better than what they are.

Afterall, half of the point and purpose of playing a medieval game is fighting on the battlefield. Auto-resolve just doesn't cut it, not for me and not for any other passionate of strategy in general, military strategy in particular. Just read the post below, to understand my point of view:

https://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?603508-Strategic-use-of-auto-resolve&p=13070618&viewfull=1#post13070618

(to be perfectly clear, it's the #10 post from that topic, right above my reply. Just in case there are problems with the link)

That's why I couldn't really enjoy games like Europa Universalis or Crusader Kings.

I'm not sayin' that the auto-resolve option shouldn't exist in the game, ofc it should exist, but I'd use it only as an emergency solution, when from various reasons (bugs, game crashes etc.) I can't fight the battles manually.

And yes, I can't see how you can manually fight the battles in multiplayer, so auto-resolve is a must there, but that's another discussion.

Tw is a joke now IMO. the battles are so frequent and arcade style they become a chor where i just auto resolve anyways. 

[Vlad Dracul]

On 12/6/2021 at 3:25 PM, bilbobaggins764 said:

Tw is a joke now IMO. the battles are so frequent and arcade style they become a chor where i just auto resolve anyways. 

I played only M2TW and a little Empire TW (where the battles weren't as good as in Medieval), I didn't try the other games, so I'll take your word for it.

But that means that they (stupidly) destroyed the best part of the game, I don't even wanna... *smh*

 

P.S.:

Oh, I remember seeing those horrific battle-bugs on youtube at Rome II launch... and at one point I was tempted by the famous 1212 AD mod from Attila, but what I saw on youtube was also horrible. Regarding both the strategical and tactical map.

God forbid.

[bilbobaggins764]

19 hours ago, Vlad Dracul said:

I played only M2TW and a little Empire TW (where the battles weren't as good as in Medieval), I didn't try the other games, so I'll take your word for it.

But that means that they (stupidly) destroyed the best part of the game, I don't even wanna... *smh*

 

P.S.:

Oh, I remember seeing those horrific battle-bugs on youtube at Rome II launch... and at one point I was tempted by the famous 1212 AD mod from Attila, but what I saw on youtube was also horrible. Regarding both the strategical and tactical map.

God forbid.

 

Same here, i use to enjoy med 2 and empire battles, nothing CA came out with after was any fun.