Totalwar/Civ

[incubuspawn]

Ok of the totalwar fans, there seems to be a number of people who would love to see a hybrid of these 2 games. I am wondering what the Civ fans think. Personaly I would love a hybrid of what I think are the 2 best strategy war game series ever made.
Total war combat with civs city management, maps, and settlers plus research. I think is the gist of the desire. For those who do not know, Total war is the one game that offers tbs and rts without the rts portion being a major clickfest ( anyone can do it without the usual rts flaws ). It is also the only game that allows for real battlefield action with thousands of troops and real life strategies..

( ps yes homm is a great tbs game, but that is fantasy so technicly shouldn't be compared with other tbs games. )
Wasn't sure if this should be here or general, but since civ is involved I posted this here.

 

[Dusty4prez]

Yeah, this hasn't been beaten to death and if you're gonna make 2 ideas put them in the same topic.

 

[incubuspawn]

Yeah, this hasn't been beaten to death and if you're gonna make 2 ideas put them in the same topic.

why? one idea has nothign to do with the other not like there is a hundred new post every minute atm.. and I obvioulsy am not aware that the civ fans have also beaten this to death
You could have simply said
"Same story here as with the total war forums."
and I would know that there really was no point int he thread
ps just did a search and most of the results if not all had nothign to do with the hybrid idea.

 

[armchairknight]

I have played and enjoyed some RTS (Shogun: Total War, Age of Kings and Command and Conquer), but I'm ultimately a TBS guy. I'd not have much interest in adding an RTS element to my beloved Civ game. Also, wouldn't a solid hybrid take a very long time to play?

 

[Dusty4prez]

Well, on the other boards I've gone to it's been beaten to death but I think no one suggests it here because they know it ain't happenin

 

[Smidlee]

Civ Totalwar has been bought up a lot here when civ4 first came out. The biggest problem with the Totalwar series from my experience ( I played Medeval a lot more than Rome.) is once you learn how to beat the AI on the RTS battlefields againest amazing odds then the TBS strategy part (map) makes very little difference. So the strategic part of TW series is very much dumb down. Most of the game on the TBS side of TW series is nothing but mop up once you get a good size army together. They did try to solve this some with Rome:TW though.

 

[Vietcong]

rome rules.

i love hoplites..

nothing like seing too rows of hoplites with spears held out walking right into one another.

i allso love to use sythed chariots to run into the flank or rear of the enamy infantry. even tho chariots dont do too much damage the one thing thay do realy well is disorganise the enamy line. onece the line is spred out, mucked up and disorganised i charge with my infantry and very easly tear them apart.

 

[AL_DA_GREAT]

Ok of the totalwar fans, there seems to be a number of people who would love to see a hybrid of these 2 games. I am wondering what the Civ fans think. Personaly I would love a hybrid of what I think are the 2 best strategy war game series ever made.
Total war combat with civs city management, maps, and settlers plus research. I think is the gist of the desire. For those who do not know, Total war is the one game that offers tbs and rts without the rts portion being a major clickfest ( anyone can do it without the usual rts flaws ). It is also the only game that allows for real battlefield action with thousands of troops and real life strategies..

( ps yes homm is a great tbs game, but that is fantasy so technicly shouldn't be compared with other tbs games. )
Wasn't sure if this should be here or general, but since civ is involved I posted this here.

that would be cool

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I personally think it would be a move in the Wrong direction for Civ games (I personally think combat should be More abstracted than it is)

 

[Bongo-Bongo]

On the surface, it sounds great, but when you think about it, the idea would not really work for Civ. The game would take far too long due to the battles, especially for warmongerers, and with there often being a large umber of battles in Civ, having a Total War style battle would probably become incredibly tedious.

 

[boneys26]

I personally think it would be a move in the Wrong direction for Civ games (I personally think combat should be More abstracted than it is)

but isn't civilization about history? and isn't the human history full of war fighting for a bit more land... I think civi as it is misses out on turn based battles as it would bring that little something back to the game and no the game wouldn't have too be longer you could simply opt out and click on a quick resolve button so you just get the results of that battle (like you do now) like i have said in another post.
also like i said in another post it will be along time before fraxis do this, if they do it that is.. so untill then guys/moders give me a cruise missile and I'll be happy

 

[King Flevance]

I am not sure how many people are familiar with Age of Wonders 2. But I think Civ could easily move into a TBS strategy in that manner. AOW2 has a very similar setup to Civ. You have cities with build queues and make units, buildings, you research (spells but same idea as techs). Yes, it is a fantasy game but if you just remove the spell casting part you have a basic war game. I think Civ could take this system and not only have a basic warfare game but improve the system as this one in the example is years old.

I unfortunatley have not playd a TW game as of yet, although I am looking into them. Money is still tight for me so when I get back on my feet I will probably go hunting for them. Last I saw they were at 10 bucks a piece. With Rome as the exception. Medieval may have been 15.

 

[armchairknight]

I am not sure how many people are familiar with Age of Wonders 2. But I think Civ could easily move into a TBS strategy in that manner. AOW2 has a very similar setup to Civ. You have cities with build queues and make units, buildings, you research (spells but same idea as techs). Yes, it is a fantasy game but if you just remove the spell casting part you have a basic war game. I think Civ could take this system and not only have a basic warfare game but improve the system as this one in the example is years old.

I unfortunatley have not playd a TW game as of yet, although I am looking into them. Money is still tight for me so when I get back on my feet I will probably go hunting for them. Last I saw they were at 10 bucks a piece. With Rome as the exception. Medieval may have been 15.

Yeah, I know AoW. It's a decent enough game, but I no longer play it. I liked HoMM better and Civ. I'm not sure, myself, but I can't really see Civ following AoW. IIRC, AoW's turns are uniform in length and don't simulate the passage of thousands of years. The turns in Civ would have to reduced to a constant, I think, for what you propose to actually work. That's if my memory isn't playing tricks on me. It's been a wee little while since I've played AoW.

 

[King Flevance]

You are right about the stepping down of Civ to it, however, I mean as far as attcking a city goes. All of your units attack at once rather than 1 at a time. This would mean better organization of your armies. But also battlefield tactics would play more of a role, or should I say even have a role. As of now there is no real battlefield tactics in civ. It is still the classic 1 square smacking another.

This would mean giving units alot more values than they currently have. Like they may have 1 whereas on a battlefield map they would have 10 I always liked the battles on AOW more than the actual worldmap. As in that regard I have always had Civ that beat it out. Military units in Civ would no longer require anything but movement values on the world map as their values would comeinto play on the battlefield.

Although, I haven't played TW to compare that system itself.

 

[Figaro]

I think there is definately scope for the TW series to expand more in the direction of Civ, in other words there being more options and realism in the TBS (I haven't played Rome, but for Shogun and Medieval the TBS part is really just a break between the fighting and a chance to look at your beautiful empire expand province by province). But I don't think Civ needs an RTS element, its a good enough game as it is.

 

[MikeH]

Yes I recently picked up a copy of the budget version of M:TW and have been having fun with it, particularly the 3D battles, but the strategic level really needs a decent diplomatic engine and could certainly benefit from using one similar to Civ's. although I still think that Europa Universalis' diplomatic engine takes some beating in more historical games.

As for Civ with real time battles, that's pretty much what Master of Magic did, the dtretegic games was clearly based on the original Civ, but it had a seperate battle engine. It worked pretty well, but the scope of the game wasn't as large as Civ 4. Adding a seperate battle game to Civ 4 would slow the game down even more and most players would probably choose to auto resolve most, if not all,battles.

 

[incubuspawn]

hmm I wouldnt want total war or civ to become a hybrid, Id like to see a seperate game with booth elements. Or maybe a cooperative game made by both companies. It should not be a civ or a total war game however. mtw 2 may however have some elements since it will include discovering the new world ( very excited about that ) I think ( do not qoute me ) that we may have settlers in it.

 

[HourlyDaily]

On the surface, it sounds great, but when you think about it, the idea would not really work for Civ. The game would take far too long due to the battles, especially for warmongerers, and with there often being a large umber of battles in Civ, having a Total War style battle would probably become incredibly tedious.

I think Cvilization has done a reasonable job of trying to implement some of the Total war concepts in an uncomplicated way - defensive bonuses, flanking etc. (Flanking is a fairly crappy promotion that could be made better)

I'm all for a complicated game and deep military model - other concepts like morale, supply, scouting/espionage would be interesting but for many of the good things about TW it would require a rejig of the basic 1v1 unit battle system. If someone were to mod giant stack of doom and supporting units into a playable civ game, it would fun to explore to see if it really did improve the game. From a realism standpoint it would, but perhaps would only succeed in making the game even easier for those who already hold the upper hand/largest stack.

I love stoming the walls, cheap ranged unit pickoffs and running down fleeing enemies in Total War, but I guess I'll just stick to Total War for my fix of that.
But it certainly could not hurt Firaxis to 'borrow' ideas (such as trade and diplomacy) from the Total War series. It is easy to be a fan of both games.