Make sure Companions are better than Praetorian cavalry. That's about it, the Greeks and Romans are the best so that makes it good enough by my standards.

Or maybe more action when you zoom in.

More units available on a battlefield.

Option to customize your own formations.

Able to place move soldiers from formation in deployment turn. (Like place 1 soldier infront of the others.)

- Improve pathfinding (often the toughest programming part of a strat game).
- Allow naval admirals to stack & swap ancillaries.
- Admirals to have more ancillaries & traits.
- Put a simple block on the Senate button when playing SPQR.
- Report absolute incomes for cities (at least as the default option).
- Allow wardogs to return to the field of battle, not chase a routed enemy to oblivian.

i wish the spy had a botton for self exploring
2-for soldiers not to sap so quickly
for siege towers to burnd faster
for the units to be more ovidients, specially archers.

Self exploring? That makes me sick... soldiers sap at an already sluggish rate, the game is supposed to be realistic, to be more what?

Definately playable naval battles. It would be so cool to watch ships go at it with balistas and catapults. Or to have them have some grappling ability so you can board them and then watch them all fight on the decks of the ships. Thats pretty much the only thing I would want, 'cause having the computer do you battles can sometimes be so frusterating.

lol@self-exploring

hahaha I can see it. The crafty spy sneaks of to a secluded spot in the forrest, cracks open the ancient vaseline and starts exploring himself. hhahahaha

[This message has been edited by Centy (edited 01-14-2006 @ 02:09 AM).]

- Playable naval battles
- Improved AI
- Not putting all the new family members in the capital (was this changed in the last patch: haven't tried)

Improved campaign AI (I still cannot fathom why it will often attack piecemeal). Ideally better battle AI too but campaign AI seems more easily improved.

Stopping the AI cheats (overstacking of units especially). But that would require the improved campaign AI.

All Wartrain's suggestions (bar the wardogs).

Allow more mobile forces to withdraw ad infinitum from less mobile ones (ie all cavalry armies should not be caught by infantry armies).

More reasonable outcomes when autoresolving naval battles.

Get rid of weapon and armour enhancements and their buildings (utterly ahistorical). Allow experience to be accrued more easily (at the bronze levels at least).

Limit the numbers of exotic troops that can be maintained by a single building (say each temple can support one berserker unit, until its wiped out, merged or disbanded, you can't build another without building another temple, same for elephants, praetorians etc).

hmmm.. i can only think of one right now... ill say itr anyways.

-make it so that in maP BATTLEAS, THE AI general does not charge into your line.

that happebns alot with me ion the ;later patrches (1.3/1.5) and its annoying b/c then general gets killed like in two seconds. its like a bug.

Playable naval battles --- absolutely, positively, for sure.

Had put the game away for quite a while & started again over the holidays. Found I had to get patches 1.3 & 1.5 & new nVidia card drivers (Did everyone get those? As usual, they help game stability! came out around Dec 20, 2005)

Starting a new Brutii campaign, I replayed a number of naval battles in the early game, before 260 BC. Results totally RANDOM! In battles where boats (all biremes) were from 3-1 in my favor thru pretty even matches to 1-3 against me, saw results of: disaster - all my boat(s) sunk, defeat - my boat(s) retreat (to about worst POSSIBLE position), victory - (Greek or Pirate) boat(s) retreat, & victory - sink all opponents. The real rub to me was it didn't seem make ANY difference dependant on crew experience or size, odds for/against, or whether I was attacking or defending. I did these a BUNCH of replays & just got more & more peeved. I know there's some randomness to the outcome of warfare, but, C'MON!

Yeah, it would be sorta complicated. But the game knows how to restrict movement of units around & within terrain features - see, especially, in-town battles. I have long thought the idea of putting 600-800 men on 1 bireme absurd (& that's just a full stack of medium size units!) I think Civilization's system of larger, later-era ships carrying more units is more realistic. If you want to carry a large army on biremes, you better have a bunch of biremes (which could still be stacked into a single fleet).

It would be cool to see the ships closing on battle map. The ranged units open fire, then the ships close. Possibly there's RAMMING - is that why naval battles come out so different now? hmmm... Then the grapling ropes & poles come out (new special ability? ...for new "marine" units?) & finally, there's the melee. Cool!

I've seen a number of posts here & there about the Total War series going into the Napoleonic era. For that (or anything set after later 1400's) to work at all, for me, at least, the naval battle issue HAS to move onto the battle map, under player control.

That's my 2¢ worth.

[This message has been edited by mikecz (edited 01-16-2006 @ 12:14 PM).]

Quote:

Yes it was changed... now I get family members who end up all the way in desert cities far far away from where they need to be -.-

Quote:

NO! to the second one, because it doesn't make sense to me?

the first one would ease a lot of irritation by me, wasting time building those buildings, and retraining all my troops when I SHOULD be training new units

My own ideas:

- (done in RTR) Ability to build MORE THAN ONE temple in each city
- More realistic unit names and appearance
- PLAYABLE NAVAL BATTLES!!!!!
- Units being transported in naval battle help stack odds against enemy as they assist in battle
- MORE MOVEMENT POINTS!!! (Alexander went from Greece to Alexandria to Babylon to India to Babylon again in 7 years (14 turns). In RTW Alexander would've died of old age after like 20 years (40 turns) X_X!!)
- Playable Rebel factions!! (special agents sent into cities to stir unrest XD)
- More realistic economies (like not having Barbarian cities go straight to negative income for no reason)
- More realistic AI (like not betraying you every other turn -.-)
- (done in RTR) Bigger campaign map, to include India and Bactria and such!
- (done in RTR) More realistic faction symbols (instead of cheap little MSPaint created stuff, like the Germanian axe and the Gallic pig and the Greek lightning bolt and the Macedonian Spartan crest)
- (done in RTR) PTOLEMAIC EMPIRE!!!!!! NOT ANCIENT MIDDLE KINGDOM EGYPT
- (done in RTR) Mercenaries NOT dressed in grass green -.-
- Ability to make horses into Family members or Faction Heirs
- Ability to ground Generals (put them on foot or on Elephants!)
- Virtually no army for Carthage other than Punic troops (and more mercenary units in North Africa and Sicily)

and my absolute favorite one:

- FEMALE GENERALS!!!!!!!!! (Maybe not for the Romans or such, but for the Barbarians)

[This message has been edited by Andariel (edited 01-14-2006 @ 04:00 PM).]

Make Skirmishers more effective, when I read the Iliad then come play this game I can't believe they would hardly kill anyone.

The Hellinator family members have always (well at least sine 1.4 or 1.3) spawned where ther father is.

I love Emma Watson...

Wow, we really have some good ideas in this thread. Not sure about the feasibility of some, development wise, but many seem relatively easy to implement, if CA were funded and inclined to do so .

things that are good in rtw and don't need changing:
-easily identifiable units due to distinct color (hate it when 2 groups of grass green mercenaries clash and you're having trouble which is yours and which is rebellish)
-playability more important then historical accuracy. Ok ok, it's all great to have perfectly historical accurate units, but if you can't play with'm, who will think of playing the game? Surely, the egyptians were hellenistic, but yet another hellenic faction could be a little bit boring...
-the amazon chariots :-)

Things that need changing imho
-map. Larger, perhaps, but I'd like coastal settlements (the one that make profit) versus continental settlements, so there's a possibility of controlling a sea empire where you'd use fleets to bring in reinforcement armies, rather then marching all across the country. Sea battles could be nice too
-more diplomatical options, the sort of 'if you don't... then I'll break alliance', and an AI that can reply to this threaths.
-some of the inventions of BI I do miss when playing the original game: the ability to recruit generals, religion, organized rebellions. Something I can miss from BI: those hordes that just don't seem to die off, and the enously repetetive battles when 6 fullflag stacks attack you over and over again at the exact same spot.

Diplomacy could be vastly improved. It's really a bit simplistic as it stands.

And whilst I'm all for fog of war, it's a little silly that the West Roman Empire starting map doesn't include the ERE and vice versa.

I don't mind the odd a historical unit to add variety but it's silly to allow every infantry unit in a Roman army to consist of Praetorians. If a combo of Max barracks and max palace supported ONE praetorian unit, that'd give better balance with respect to army composition

It'd be nice to have different start dates too so that you could have a campaign starting in 50BC between Caesar (JUlii) and Pompey (Brutii).

Different start times! BRILLIANT! like medieval total war!

You could start in like Ancient Roman times like 500 BC where as Roman Kingdom, you fight Etruscans and use Hoplites, or as Greeks you fight Persia

You could start in normal RTW time of 270 BC

You could start right at Marius reforms

etc!

This thread now Indexed as:

Ideas for improving RTW [improve, fix, add, better, future, patch, CA, SEGA]: 1

[This message has been edited by Wartrain (edited 01-14-2006 @ 09:35 PM).]

Campaigns. You can do campaigns with heroes. Lets say you want to do the Caesar campaign. You have to fight the battles that he fought in order. Like you must invade the gauls first then you must build stuff in Rome then fight Pompey in Greece then go to Egypt then come back etc...

Or it could also include the strategical map like building up a city or more complex stuff. Like all the historical generals get placed where they actually belonged in history.

Like the Hannibal Campaign you must destroy certain cities within the certain amount of turns. Then you have like great battles against Scipio how they really were.

No more insta hit death for cavalry. I loce more cavalry men int he collision with say a archer unit then in the actual fighting, its stupid

Someone mentioned this in another thread & I'm inclined to second it in this thread:

1. Better terrain detail in battle maps:
rocks (lots of them), hedges, BIG bushes & trees that are NOT pine/palm trees; gulleys, cliff faces (think natural trap points), huts/hovels, any other buildings.

I know they improved the terrain engine in BI, & it certainly looks better now, but terrain still doesn't seem to play as large a part in battles as I think it should.

2. Battlefield defences:
The romans were famous for being able to march all day & then dig a fortifying ditch & turf wall at the end of the day. They reinforced them with sharpened staves which they carried with them.

I'd love to see a roman army defending a marching camp defended by a ditch/rampart & spiked barricade.

In the same way, I think that it would be reasonable to expect any army to "dig in" at the end of it's turn & set up some sort of defensive camp.

Hey, now that's an idea: what about the army camp? Alexander's victory at Gaugamella was partly due to some() persian units concentrating on looting the greek camp, rather than exploiting the breach in the greek lines. Perhaps they could include some sort of looting attribute similar to the message/options you get when you capture a town/city. (capture/sell into slavery/annihilate)

my 10c

GM

Great ideas everyone, evern if some of them may be too cost/production inhibitive to CA. At least the forum of ideas flowing, though, and that says a lot for the people posting here!

I agree mostly with MIKECZ and believe naval battles are a must.

Terrain should have to effect the battle more.