Patience and the Modern World Player

[unmerged(119342)]

Things happened slowly in the ancient world such as movement, communications, cultural development. As modern global folks for the most part, the pace of the game seems maddeningly slow to modern people. We expect to set the plans and see them unfold quickly.

While the game's slow pace is mostly realistic, I think it puts many people off the game. They want WW II blitz and occupation. However, remember what trouble partisans and irregulars caused for the German war machine in WW II, in America's Vietnam War and for that matter in America's two current wars. I contend that smash and grab does not work in many cases even in modern times.

What to do if there is another expansion or mods? Should there be abstractions to speed up the game for playability and recoding to make the game run faster? Is the game already what most players want?

Perhaps, a poll is in order to see what players want? Can the powers that be arrange this?

 

[The-Doc]

Well I typed up a whole wall of text reply, but my connection failed midway through and I don't think I'll ever redo it.

Short of it is, the tedium (outside of military campaigning) is due to a lack of depth in the domestic management of respective nations. Improvements to the trade system (a la Descartes system), Character desicions (further reaching, more choice, less apparent impacts), Religion (less gambly, more pervasive, less anachronistic), different tech development (more player input, more and earlier distinction between cultures and other avenues of improvement like battlefield adaptation cultural exchange and reverse engineering. I can think of a lot of ways to easily implement these and hope Paradox will do something along these lines if they ever come back to Rome.

If any of that piques anyone's interest I'd be happy to throw some of my tl;dr thoughts your way.

 

[vanin]

Well I typed up a whole wall of text reply, but my connection failed midway through and I don't think I'll ever redo it.

Short of it is, the tedium (outside of military campaigning) is due to a lack of depth in the domestic management of respective nations. Improvements to the trade system (a la Descartes system), Character desicions (further reaching, more choice, less apparent impacts), Religion (less gambly, more pervasive, less anachronistic), different tech development (more player input, more and earlier distinction between cultures and other avenues of improvement like battlefield adaptation cultural exchange and reverse engineering. I can think of a lot of ways to easily implement these and hope Paradox will do something along these lines if they ever come back to Rome.

If any of that piques anyone's interest I'd be happy to throw some of my tl;dr thoughts your way.

Quoted for truth. And while I am here I'll continue my crusade for marriages, I hate when my king's daughters all marry baboons that I will have to call sons-in-law. Love is blind but most marriages weren't due to love in these times, and wouldn't for another 2200 or-so years, atleast not in the upper circles of society.

 

[out]

I don't think there's anything wrong with EUR's pacing. It's anything but realistic, though: battles should take hours not days or weeks; no siege in the antiquity took months to complete; sending envoys from the Levant to Britain shouldn't take the same time as from Sinai to Judea... I could go on.

As The-Doc points out, people aren't bored because the game is too slow, but because there's not a whole lot of interesting things to do at any speed.

It would be an entirely different game if one tries to model all the time lag, fog of war, etc. into a game.

 

[Nyrael]

@uly:
I think that the battles in EU:R and other Paradox games represent all battles that happen in the province, not just one of them.

 

[Descartes]

That's a good point, Nyrael. I also agree with the points that Doc raised, the game definitely needs some more player input.

 

[The-Doc]

@uly:
I think that the battles in EU:R and other Paradox games represent all battles that happen in the province, not just one of them.

Agreed, though the graphical representation may lend itself towards being a single battle the large amount of territory covered in land or naval battles plus the changes in dice rolls etc. lead me to think of it more as a protracted series of engagements. The quick battles when an army has been run into the ground or you are crushing some rebels or barbs would be the single action battles.

 

[out]

@uly:
I think that the battles in EU:R and other Paradox games represent all battles that happen in the province, not just one of them.

Yes I've been told that. But the fact is that EUR represent the battles as if they are single engagements, and for both field battles and sieges. As well the casualties are calculated on the daily basis for the entire duration.

In reality warfare as this era are ritualized to an extent. Skirmishes are often but it's the real pitched battles that count, and pitched battles don't happen more than a few times in . Battles that last longer than a day and huge casualty numbers are rare, and often become the stuff of legend.

To offer some suggestion for improvement, I think EUR, or more likely EUR2, can learn something from the AGEOD games. Not that I'm a big fan of AGEOD, but I like how they modeled provinces (or a single unit of the map) as a wide space rather than a small room. Two armies occupying the same province won't necessarily meet unless they are actively seeking each other.

For EUR, I suggest that the player should be able to set each army's attitude or tactics: seek battle, seek only advantageous battle, harrass and evade, defense-entrench, defense-ambush, avoid detection, and so on. Each of the attitude, along with the leader's ability and the army make up, would affect the army's visibility and detection ability. When two armies occupy the same province, they are checked for detection daily, based on the two armies visibility, detection and some level of randomness. Each attitude also determines the army's prefered action when detected the enemy or attacked by the enemy.

Major battles would only occur if both armies are seeking battle; or if one army catches another by surprise (i.e. detecting the enemy without being detected) AND the surprised army fails to disengage.

Some attitudes would also give bonus/penalty when specific situation are met. For example, harrass would have a nice bonus against surprised foe, ambush would give bonus only if undetected, and an army avoiding detection would have a big penalty if caught.

I could flesh this out more, but I think the idea is simple enough that you could probably imagine the rest. Yes it would require a complete redesign of the combat engine and the AI, but at least in design principle it is not too difficult to implement. Considering the low province density in EUR, this level of micromanagement won't be too problematic. This would also give a great deal of strategic depth and allow for better recreation of some of this era's famous campaigns (think Hannibal and Scipio).

 

[Swuul]

Uly, I too like the AGEOD system with the different stances. However, there are a ccouple serious issues with it too

1) It depends on the game being turn based. While I personally like turn based games, Paradox games are not turn based. The whole concept of the games would have to change.

2) Turn length. The two week turns (for example AACW, which I have most experience in) result in some ridiculous things. Cavalry can dance around infantry as they please, fleet movements are ridiculous, etc. The turns should be at most 5 days long, and that in itself would for many make the game a monster to play.


Also, sieges in antique period regularily lasted for months and years (unless some traitor did open the gates), especially in areas without forests (the armies at the time did not carry the siege equipment with them, but the siege machines were built at the place where they were intended to be used, and then discarded there (after metal, rope etc parts had been removed)). The siege times in EU:Rome are actually way too short to what they were historically.

 

[out]

Uly, I too like the AGEOD system with the different stances. However, there are a ccouple serious issues with it too

1) It depends on the game being turn based. While I personally like turn based games, Paradox games are not turn based. The whole concept of the games would have to change.

2) Turn length. The two week turns (for example AACW, which I have most experience in) result in some ridiculous things. Cavalry can dance around infantry as they please, fleet movements are ridiculous, etc. The turns should be at most 5 days long, and that in itself would for many make the game a monster to play.

Like I said I'm not a huge AGEOD fan, I just like this idea of theirs. I haven't played their games much and I haven't experienced the problems this system may cause.

1. Yes to implement this system the whole design would have to change. But IMO it's very doable IF PI is willing to try something radically new for PI games. It's something for EUR2 if anything.

2. Precisely, since EUR isn't turnbased this wouldn't be a problem. Detection should be checked on daily, bi-weekly basis or so. And what's wrong with cavalry being able to dance around infantry? Isn't that the whole point of having cavalry?

 

[Swuul]

And what's wrong with cavalry being able to dance around infantry? Isn't that the whole point of having cavalry?

Oh, that *is* the point. But when an infantry regiment takes a blocking position across a river, it isn't possible that an opposing cavalry regiment rides over that bridge, waves the infantry good bye, and continues a couple hundred miles before the infantry has a chance to report of the incident. That however is exactly what happens in AGEOD games. Cavalry is *too* mobile, and the only way to stop cavalry from raiding behind your lines is to recruit three-four times more cavalry. Then again, you could send that cavalry to behind enemy lines instead, because they are much more effective there.

For example the AACW game in multi-player (without any home-rules about raiding behind enemy lines) is more like Vietnam war than American Civil War. It all gets down to who strangles with cavalry the opponent harder, and phukk about any armies. While the AI is simply not capable to react against a human using the raiding game (so basically you have to force some home-rules on yourself to get *some* sort of a good gaming experience).

In fact, AGEOD has taken many steps towards correcting those problems, but the flaw is too inherent and too deep in the system (and for example AACW has got a lot better the past couple months when players have been pointing out the problems; AGEOD is real good at patching old games, but that is because they have one engine that just use different settings in different games, so when you are developing a new game and want new stuff in it, they new stuff becomes available for old games too (quite an elegant thing if you ask me, but basically does not allow for very different games).

In essence, I do *not* hope Paradox would follow AGEOD for how cavalry works, when AGEOD itself is moving towards the way cavalry is in EU3 and Rome (providing mobility on the battlefield for flanking attacks, and fast reaction forces to stop sudden incursions).

 

[Finnish Dragon]

Also, sieges in antique period regularily lasted for months and years (unless some traitor did open the gates), especially in areas without forests (the armies at the time did not carry the siege equipment with them, but the siege machines were built at the place where they were intended to be used, and then discarded there (after metal, rope etc parts had been removed)). The siege times in EU:Rome are actually way too short to what they were historically.

True, the siege of Syracuse in Second Punic War took two years to finish off and the siege of Carthage in Third Punic War took about three years to finish off. Complex city walls, large amounts of supplies and possible port facilities helped the besieged party to keep defenders supplied.

 

[BurningEGO]

You guys are speaking of cities with well built, high walls. Not every single province/city possessed them.

Carthage took time to take, but remember it was an important city with more then one puny wall. Any other insignificant city in the middle of nowhere would never last for so long.

In EUR, few provinces actually possesed such walls or fortifications, yet they take a lot to conquer as well.

 

[Nyrael]

What I sad about battles is similiar to sieges: you siege a province, not just a city. There are more then one city that must be conquered before some level of control over province is established.

 

[The-Doc]

You guys are speaking of cities with well built, high walls. Not every single province/city possessed them.

Carthage took time to take, but remember it was an important city with more then one puny wall. Any other insignificant city in the middle of nowhere would never last for so long.

In EUR, few provinces actually possesed such walls or fortifications, yet they take a lot to conquer as well.

Of course the cities in these provinces are all major cities in their own right.

 

[out]

But when an infantry regiment takes a blocking position across a river, it isn't possible that an opposing cavalry regiment rides over that bridge, waves the infantry good bye, and continues a couple hundred miles before the infantry has a chance to report of the incident.

That's a good point. As I said I'm not enough of an AGEOD player to know these problems. On the other hand AGEOD "provinces" are much smaller than EUR, and there's no way to make an army block a specific passage in EUR anyway.

Just for brainstorming, I propose one solution:
Certain provinces should have the "chockepoint" property. When an army occupies such a province and sets its stance to "defense-entrench" or "defense-ambush", then it won't be possible for any enemy army to move through this province without being detected.

The alternative to giving EUR better tactical depth is to make provinces much smaller, a la HOI3. But I think the key for a good EUR design is to strike a balance between depth and simplicity. EUR is afterall not supposed to be as combat-centric as HOI. Not that I would mind a more detailed simulation. I think the AGEOD system, modified appropriately, would be just such a good balance: complex but not too complicated.