Would a cIV:TW hybrid be the best ever?

[futurehermit]

cIV and the Total War (TW) series (I am primarily basing this on my experience with RTW and M2TW) are both awesome imo (ciV not so much). They both have very strong points in their favour, and I am fantasizing (since it probably would never happen) about what a game that featured the best of both would be like?

Here are what I consider to be some of the main strengths of each:

cIV:

1) New maps, opponents each time--each game is very different (TW the campaign map and opponents are always the same)

2) Multiple victory conditions (TW it's always domination)

3) Choose where you want to settle (TW the settlements are fixed)

4) Develop and work the terrain (tiles, resources) around you with workers (TW it's just about building bulidings)

5) Culture determines your borders (TW borders are fixed)

6) Tech tree (TW it's confined to individual settlements)

7) World wonders (R:TW in particular the 7 wonders have fixed locations)

8) Great people (TW more so has agents, which are also interesting, but having a "Great Spy" that could do TW kinds of things would be very cool)


TW:

1) The big one for me is that you fight battles in real time, controlling each unit, on a battle map--much superior imo to both stacks of doom or ciV's 1UPT.

2) Superior campaign and battle map AI

3) Not just one leader who lives for thousands of years, but a royal family, with different members gaining different traits based on their experiences (in cIV you get two preset traits). Similarly, your generals play a more direct and interesting role, both with regards to battles and also governing settlements (in cIV the great generals have limited purpose)

4) More variety of units amongst different factions (in cIV it's just one UU)

5) Agents--having priests, merchants, princesses, spies, assassins, etc. running around causing havoc is really neat (in cIV there are spies and execs, which are similar, though execs have limited functionality)


The first 4 from each game are what inspired me to write this post. If those 8 were combined together, I think that would make for a truly great game. One difficulty that I anticipate might be the different scopes of each game (TW focusing on a limited region, while cIV it's worldwide). But, I think that could be worked out.

What do you think?

 

[Kid R]

I'm not sure the mash up of campaign map and real time battles really works in TW games. It seems like two different games really - I only played Shogun TW but I was always in either a strategy mood or a battle mood when I booted it up. So I tended to play all my campaigns on the strategy map only (let the AI resolve the fighting), and when I wanted to spend an hour or two on a battle would play a stand-alone skirmish scenario. I don't remember now, were there randomly-generated skirmishes or was it just the historical scenarios that came with the game?

I think some of what you suggest would be good but personally I could do without the real time battles in my strategy gaming!

I like the idea of moving in the TW direction on tech, with a very much simplified tech tree (even right down to just one "tech" per era). And then having a wider range of unit types and buildings other game mechanics that could be used at all stages. The challenge then would not be so much the constant Civ grind of striving to get the next tech, then the next tech, always just keeping up with enemies doing the same, but leaning a bit more more towards imaginitive use of the stuff when you do get it.

Giving great generals the option to get more involved in the mechanics of fighting as you suggest would be great, especially if they could still do things like what they currently do, and maybe other new things.

The idea of leader traits evolving through the game almost sounds a bit like Civ 5 cultural policies (empire wide effect, no going back once chosen), which I thought were quite a good idea if not very well done with the way you earn them in 5. Perhaps just something simple like each new era you could earn a new trait. Or swap one of your old ones for a new one anyway. Or conquering another civ lets you take over one of their traits. Or you have the option to abdicate your leader at some cost but get a new trait with their successor. I suppose that would just be a bit like changing civics right now.

 

[lymond]

I played the heck out of Medieval II TW. Some of the battles with the Timurids were just epic. I could see Total War benefiting more from some CIV IV concepts. Not the real time battles - they would stay pretty much the same. However, I could the TBS campaign map benefiting from some of the ideas. I always thought that building stuff in TW was pretty lackluster. Just buy the building, wait a few turns, and viola. Not really much strategy behind it other than trying to establish an economy.

Conversely, the only concept I could see coming to CIV IV is that we could zoom into battles. It would be more HOMM style though and TBS. I would not want any RTS stuff in civ.

 

[Tycho]

I've enjoyed Rome Total War and M2TW as well as Civ4, and it would be interesting to see a mashup of the two. The agents were one of my favorite things in Medievel with the large selection (to initiate diplomacy with another faction you had to literally get a diplomat and send him to a city), but at the same time they are a bit like the specialists in Civilization, only that they die after a certain amount of years pass in game.

Then again, if something of the sort were to happen, we will have to wait maybe ten or so years as the computing power of our pcs doubles every two years or the size of the pcs decrease in size by half. Maybe Creative Assembly and Firaxis will one day come together and create a RTS-Turn based game, but as it stands we will sadly have to wait.

The four points that you have presented futurehermit are very good, and that's what I've been thinking about for awhile, ever since I started playing Civ 4 and Total War. The epic battles I sometimes had with over ten thousand troops on the field made for an awesome spectacle while the strategy of Civilization forces you to think about what to do. Hopefully the ideas you have presented may be integrated into a future Civilization game or a creation between the two studios.

 

[Knightly_]

As epic as this sounds in the first place from a gamedesign perspective its not a good idea because there would be too much stuff in one game. There is a reason why the economic management in Rome and Medieval is pretty simple. It would draw too much attention from those epic battles which we all love so much. In Civ on the other hand you have the time to optimize every city because fighting takes effectively only a short amount of time. A combined version of Civ and TW would either be a game which does not know what it wants to be or a game where both elements are so watered down that its probably not satisfactory for anyone. However adapting good concepts like lymond said is often worth it.

You can see this in other TBS games, too. In tactical combat games you often only have a simple background framework (TW, Jagged Alliance, Homm series, Master of Magic) when compared to Civ. Talking of TBS, i just bought good old Xcom Ufo Defense from steam and im going to beat the sh.. out of that pesky aliens

Knightly_

edit:misleading typo...

 

[GGracchus]

Yes, it would be. RTW is tied with Civ for my favorite game of all time. I would shell out quite a bit for a mashup of the two games(IMO, Empire/Napoleon are worse than M2TW/RTW). The only problem is that it would require quite a lot of processing power to see my ~150 inf/arty take down shaka's massive stack.

 

[Skallagrimson]

IMO the most epic combo would be Civ4 "as is" forming the campaign engine and game mechanics, and TW forming the tactical engine and game mechanics.

This solves the "stacks or 1 unit per tile" question between Civ4 and Civ5: BOTH! Stacks in Campaign mode, and 1 unit per tile in battle mode.

One possible mechanical problem would be how to do a credible job of representing modern warfare using the TW battle interface concept: modern units tend to blend into the terrain rather than march in formation. New command types might be needed, like "take cover" and "advance to cover" and "tactical withdrawal", etc. Come to think of it that should be fully doable.

In Multiplayer though, it should be campaign-only with battles being auto-resolved at the "Civ" level (campaign level) so as not to bog down every human player as two humans duke it out on a battlefield.

I love the TW battle interface though.

 

[Antilogic]

One possible mechanical problem would be how to do a credible job of representing modern warfare using the TW battle interface concept: modern units tend to blend into the terrain rather than march in formation. New command types might be needed, like "take cover" and "advance to cover" and "tactical withdrawal", etc. Come to think of it that should be fully doable.

You know, I was trying to find the Dilbert comic where a guy throws out a suggestion in the meeting, and Dilbert says something along the lines of "thanks for taking something next-to-impossible and making it sound so easy that not accomplishing it will make me look incompetent". Felt like it was appropriate for this thread.

I think the best we could hope for would be something akin to the AGEOD battle engine--we could have real-valued armies that would fight as one, calculations would be made taking into effect level of fortifications, technology, high ground, troop morale and organization, etc., but ultimately all the decisions are still made on the strategic level--the tactics are "behind-the-scenes".

Ultimately, you get a screen like this informing you how the battle went, with all the applied modifiers (in spoiler):

Spoiler :

 

[Bushface]

I wonder just how useful "140 canons" would be on a battlefield, be they either the clerical ones or the musical form. I'd prefer to have 140 cannons.

 

[Antilogic]

I wonder just how useful "140 canons" would be on a battlefield, be they either the clerical ones or the musical form. I'd prefer to have 140 cannons.

There are some funny typos in the English version--turns out not all the errors got caught before the release.

 

[d_mess]

I agree it would be an awesome game.


If anyone is interested in that genre, check out Knights of Honor. I guess technically its all real-time, but you can adjust the game speed to almost a standstill, and your economy works in "turns". Really entertaining game for its relative-unknown'ness.



But yeah, a real-time-battle mode worked into civ4 (or any civ game I guess), would be absolutely amazing. I think it would have to offer a sim-function though, or each turn could last hours if you had to fight every little battle.

 

[LegionSteve]

I was a big fan of STW and MTW. I also played RTW and M2TW quite a lot but usually lost interest and quit the campaign pretty soon because the enemy AI in the campaign was so dumb it kind of destroyed the immersion. Still, my first reaction to the idea of a Civ 4 type campaign with TW style battles is that it would be awesome.

The problem though is that if you can completely outwit the AI tactically (which is the point of having tactical battles) it destroys the balance between the effectiveness of units and hammer cost. In Civ 4 you can improve your chances against the AI using terrain, walls etc. but ultimately his 5000 hammer army is going to beat your 1000 hammer army as long as he built a sensible mix of seige and other stuff. If you could win that battle by using tactics against the AI then it would mess up the balance of the campaign game. Like in Civ 5.

 

[Kid R]

5) Culture determines your borders (TW borders are fixed)

I wouldn't mind fixed borders. Culture war is a great mechanic in principle but it needs to be made clearer than it is in Civ 4 exactly what you need to do to win tiles. I find it frustrating just to build every culture building going and hope for the best in 100 turns. Yes the algorithm is published but it's not pretty.

 

[Skallagrimson]

I was a big fan of STW and MTW. I also played RTW and M2TW quite a lot but usually lost interest and quit the campaign pretty soon because the enemy AI in the campaign was so dumb it kind of destroyed the immersion. Still, my first reaction to the idea of a Civ 4 type campaign with TW style battles is that it would be awesome.

The problem though is that if you can completely outwit the AI tactically (which is the point of having tactical battles) it destroys the balance between the effectiveness of units and hammer cost. In Civ 4 you can improve your chances against the AI using terrain, walls etc. but ultimately his 5000 hammer army is going to beat your 1000 hammer army as long as he built a sensible mix of seige and other stuff. If you could win that battle by using tactics against the AI then it would mess up the balance of the campaign game. Like in Civ 5.

The AI in MTW were not entirely stupid when it came to tactics, and even if they were, that's the way Civ already is today: ******ed AI who rely on brute force to try to beat you, which at the higher diffuculty levels they can achieve more easily since they have cheater bonuses, worldbuildering themselves free units every couple of turns. Adding a battle interface would at worst be more of the same, but in a better case scenario could give an opportunity to re-smarten the AI and allow for more challenging levels of a smartness of AI tactics basis rather than an overwhelming AI bonus basis.

 

[Skallagrimson]

Computer chess is really hard, and they don't need 6,000 queens on the board to achieve it. So... why not hire some chess programmers?

 

[Antilogic]

Computer chess is really hard, and they don't need 6,000 queens on the board to achieve it. So... why not hire some chess programmers?

In all fairness, chess theory has been thought out, tested for centuries, and written about countless times by skilled experts. These games are literally invented as the developers work on them. There's also no uncertainty besides what your opponent chooses to move--the attacking piece always wins and replaces the defender.

 

[Rhavanna]

I have always wanted a game like that tbh. I love civ, and I love the TW series, (well, most of them)

My favorite aspects of civ are exploring the world, (you have no idea what it looks like), and teching up through the ages.

Then I love the combat in the total war games. I always wanted a total war game that starts in the medieval era and goes right on into the empire/napoleon games.

 

[Kid R]

Immersive combat only really makes sense when there is some challenge to it, i.e. where the sides are approximately matched. But in a game containing both tech and combat I think there'd always be a strategic advantage in teching superior units while others fight, and thus ensuring your own fights are as close to walkovers as possible.

Perhaps somebody can think of a way to make rifles vs. longbows exciting to conduct as a TW style battle ?????

 

[Skallagrimson]

Immersive combat only really makes sense when there is some challenge to it, i.e. where the sides are approximately matched. But in a game containing both tech and combat I think there'd always be a strategic advantage in teching superior units while others fight, and thus ensuring your own fights are as close to walkovers as possible.

Perhaps somebody can think of a way to make rifles vs. longbows exciting to conduct as a TW style battle ?????

TW does have some teching to it, just at various stages of the medieval period. You start with basic swords and spears, horsemen, etc., and work your way up to Chivalric Knights, Chivalric Men-at-arms, cannons, Handgunners, Mangonels, etc. It's based on building buildings rather than beaker-teching, but it still shows a progression (with a building tree and prerequisites). Civ teching could simply replace the TW teching engine and start more primitive and take it into the future.

On a challenging fight, if odds are dramatically stacked for or against, in TW I always would just auto-resolve (foregone conclusion). You'd have that in any game where one side can overpower the other eventually. The battles to MM would be at the stage of the game where it's more evenly-matched.

 

[Kid R]

I see your point. Plus there's always the temptation even with superior units to spread them as thin as you can. A couple of rifle platoons vs huge numbers of longbowmen might actually be quite entertaining....