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Riekopo

How to fix Total War's combat

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I'm looking forward to Total War: Warhammer, but am very cautious for obvious reasons. There are some things that absolutely must be done in my opinion to get the combat feeling and looking great again. To get back to a golden age of Total War combat I think a few things need to happen.

  • Blobbing moshpits need to be gone.
  • Units needs to be distinguishable from each other when in close combat.
  • Excessive clipping and phasing through needs to be gone.
  • Units pushing each other needs to be brought back.
  • The spaghetti line exploit needs to be fixed.
  • The health model needs to be changed to fix ranged combat and make unit stats and combat easier to understand or dropped entirely for the old health model.
  • Unit spacing needs to be larger and much more varied.
  • The Guard Mode button needs to be brought back especially for ranged units.
  • Generals needs to have much higher survivability.
  • Animations need to be correct for the weapon type and physically connect with the enemy.


Some new additions I would like to see are.

  • Elevation should give a range boost not damage boost.
  • There should be a way to make a unit fall back without getting them all killed.
  • A unit should have every formation option that makes sense for that unit and there should be more formation options.
  • There should be more fleshed out and advanced controls. A follow command (tell a unit to follow another unit), guard command (tell a unit to guard another unit), roaming attack command (tell a skirmisher to roam the battlefield attacking targets of opportunity), an attack move command (tell a unit to move to a location and engage enemies along the route), an explore command (tell a scout to search the battlefield for the enemy), etc.
  • Abilities should be centered on the General or on the army overall instead of every unit having abilities which creates too much micro for large scale battles.
  • Friendly fire should be less prevalent and indicated when happening.
  • Unit spacing and numbers should be more varied.
  • AI controlled units should prioritize attacking enemy units still fighting over fleeing units.
  • Ranged units should be able to turn themselves around to fire on enemies behind them.
  • All projectiles should be easily visible.

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Good suggestions! I'm just going to add just a few comments off the top of my head:

  • It might once have been possible for a "fighting retreat" stance to be included in the unit mechanics of a Total War game, but nowadays so much of the design is meant to make unit contact stickier and to force zero-sum outcomes to combat, to make battles appear more decisive overall in less time. Honestly, I'd settle for seeing a unit get broken and then reform without being decimated in the process, something accomplished by the vast majority of mods through increasing the morale shock of charges and decreasing unit movement speeds, two more things that Creative Assembly has de-emphasized in games using the Warscape engine.
  • Personally, I miss the incredibly lethal friendly fire of the first three or four Total War games. Position your archers too close to the back of your infantry and watch the latter drop like flies with the first salvo. I'm unsure with Rome 2, at least, but it seems as though there's more direct targeting with ranged units and less of an area effect, making firing on engaged troops actually feasible. That might just be my own lack of empirical scrutiny and I'm just killing my own guys too slowly to notice, but...

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  • Blobbing moshpits need to be gone.
  • The spaghetti line exploit needs to be fixed.

I guess I am not really familiar with some of the combat discussion for these games, what do you mean by blobbing moshpits and spaghetti line?

  • Units needs to be distinguishable from each other when in close combat.

I don't think they should make units distinguishable by running the aesthetics of the game, like giving them a glowing color aura or ring would make the game look to gamey. I think this will be easier in warhammer because of the highly distinctive races/factions. There is something to be said for simulating the chaos of melee combat.

  • Generals needs to have much higher survivability.
  •  

Why do you think generals need more survivability. I have always felt that the general was a tool to be carefully used because of the fact they are just another guy HP wise. I don't think I would enjoy having them be some sort of super unit. Obviously it makes more sense for that to be the case in Warhammer.

  • There should be a way to make a unit fall back without getting them all killed
  •  

The issue with having a unit fall back, is that when you turn around in melee combat you are exposed, they are trying to simulate the problems of retreats quickly becoming routes. 

  • A unit should have every formation option that makes sense for that unit and there should be more formation options.
  •  
  • There should be more fleshed out and advanced controls. A follow command (tell a unit to follow another unit), guard command (tell a unit to guard another unit), roaming attack command (tell a skirmisher to roam the battlefield attacking targets of opportunity), an attack move command (tell a unit to move to a location and engage enemies along the route), an explore command (tell a scout to search the battlefield for the enemy), etc.
  •  
  • Abilities should be centered on the General or on the army overall instead of every unit having abilities which creates too much micro for large scale battles.
  •  
  • AI controlled units should prioritize attacking enemy units still fighting over fleeing units.
  •  

I am a little confused by these. You want more unit options, and less unit options? I never had too much trouble managing unit abilities, you only have 20 or so.

 

  • Friendly fire should be less prevalent and indicated when happening.

A warning would be nice, but I think avoiding friendly fire is an important part of managing your ranged units well.

 

  • Ranged units should be able to turn themselves around to fire on enemies behind them.

They can't?

 

Most of the issues I have with the Total War series are related to the campaign map. They have made things needlessly finicky for how simplistic most of the systems truly are. Medieval 2 is still my favorite in terms of the campaign map. 

 

EDIT: They just released a pretty in depth gameplay video of a dwarves v. greenskins battle. The guy playing is shockingly bad at battlefield awareness and unit management.

 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=966&v=kKqaX3NNR28 

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Rowan Kaiser also wrote about what he found out of the demo (which he played too): http://venturebeat.com/2015/09/16/getting-total-war-combat-right-is-tough-but-warhammer-total-war-is-on-the-right-track/
 

The main thing for me is that they should adjust their system to fit and reflect the game theme/setting/pace. I rememeber that even in the 3MA podcast (the episode about Fall of the Samurai), they comment how sometimes CA appear to be 100% sure on what is trying do (more cinematic or "realistic"), and maybe that when problems kick in (trying do to both, end doing none). However, now they are very aware and that is visibile right now with Warhammer that for a pre-alpha game is way more solid that Rome 2.

 

  • Generals needs to have much higher survivability.

 

Depend on the setting really. I would say that too high survivability is just annoying and I remember this begin a quite a issue on Rome 1 mods (from memory I remember this more for Europa Barbarorum), where you would have "immortal" generals that simple won´t die, no matter what you throw at them. This lead boring sieges, where you rout or kill all the enemy units, but the general just remain there for a long time, leading to bizarre situation, where there was no more threat or risk, just you waiting the guy to die, while gazillions of units around him try to hack him down.

 

Warhammer heroes, appear improved version of Shogun 2, powerful yes, boring invencible, no. They also use unique more card arts. In game they rather larger and even if attached to units (I think they can, from what I read around), they don´t suffer from the King´s Arthur problem, of attaching a Knight to a unit to him almost became invisible, since everyone was larger that him and blob effect where even worst.

 

Now one thing I would like, and it was one of the few things good on XII Century, was that cavalry units would charge and them disengage to charge again. I don´t remember it really did anything ingame other that begin a animation, but it was kind cool.

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Now one thing I would like, and it was one of the few things good on XII Century, was that cavalry units would charge and them disengage to charge again. I don´t remember it really did anything ingame other that begin a animation, but it was kind cool.

This is something you can do manually and is actually a good strategy some cavalry units are bad at skirmishing but the initial charge does a lot of damage and harms the charged units morale. I often have my cavalry hit a unit, pull back and hit them again, do this a few times and the enemy usually breaks.

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This is something you can do manually and is actually a good strategy some cavalry units are bad at skirmishing but the initial charge does a lot of damage and harms the charged units morale. I often have my cavalry hit a unit, pull back and hit them again, do this a few times and the enemy usually breaks.

 

Yes very true, I mean more in animation they perform on their own.  However, I was looking at some youtube videos and maybe I am not very correct, since I played this game a long time ago. Because in videos I think they do a animation like what I said, but only once or twice and maybe not all of them (I mean all soldiers in the unit), the rest just blob up as usual.

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This is something you can do manually and is actually a good strategy some cavalry units are bad at skirmishing but the initial charge does a lot of damage and harms the charged units morale. I often have my cavalry hit a unit, pull back and hit them again, do this a few times and the enemy usually breaks.

 

I believe that one of the original Rome mods had a unit movement script that would automate charge-cycling. Of course, Rome was one game where the cavalry didn't need it, it was already powerful there, as opposed to Medieval 2, wherein a charge without fully lowered lances would do no damage at all.

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I don't care for Warhammer, but I'd like to see TW start to move away in single player campaigns from the micro-management approach to battles, and instead make them much larger and more about tactical choices, less about clicking everywhere all at once. 

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If there is one thing I hate about online Rome 2\Attila battles with a passion it is the spaghetti lines, nothing ruins the whole selling point of seeing giant armies and blocks of soldiers clashing up against each other like seeing units strung out like spaghetti two ranks deep because it is the most effective way of minimising the lethality of ranged units and because in melee combat typically the widest unit wins due to an effect called "Wrap Around". Cavalry kind of counters that since you need some actual weight to your units, provided by having your units drawn up deeper, when opposing a charge but there is only so much cavalry can do to bring some sense to an otherwise farsical situation that often sees even Pike Phalanxes give in to the illusion-shattering craze.

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I think archers in general should be much more effective in direct fire than at long distances because they tend to vastly overmodel their ability to hit targets effectively.

 

CA has absolutely not found any way to make lighter infantry useful so it's almost always the heaviest infantry that dominates.  CA's obsession with heavy infantry dominance has been there since Rome 1.

 

I would like to see the ability to use mixed-arm units effectively, too, because this was way more common than 'a big block of swordsmen' and 'a big block of crossbowmen/archers' standing beside each other.

 

The best combat was Shogun 2's by far because CA actually found a way to make different tiers of units useful for different things but I still think archers were generally a touch too good for a game ostensibly about the Sengoku Jidai.

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