Missing Features

[Lord_Devi]

If it's for realism reasons, i.e. they can't see the rearmost, what about archers? They are very frequently behind the infantry columns as well.

I think in real life also, that historically, it was very rare that battles occured on perfectly flat plains like they do in D2. I think that's probably an appreciated attempt at realism, but inherently flawed.

I'm curious though about the balance part - That could be a very good reason however. I wonder though how unbalancing it could really be. Properly protected or armoured command units etc shouldn't have much of a problem vs most projectiles. Unless it's a crossbow or an arbalest it shouldn't be too much of a danger - and those don't really have the range to reach the rear.

[ January 26, 2004, 21:31: Message edited by: Lord_Devi ]

[diamondspider]

Originally posted by Lord_Devi:
If it's for realism reasons, i.e. they can't see the rearmost, what about archers? They are very frequently behind the infantry columns as well.

I think in real life also, that historically, it was very rare that battles occured on perfectly flat plains like they do in D2. I think that's probably an appreciated attempt at realism, but inherently flawed.

I'm curious though about the balance part - That could be a very good reason however. I wonder though how unbalancing it could really be. Properly protected or armoured command units etc shouldn't have much of a problem vs most projectiles. Unless it's a crossbow or an arbalest it shouldn't be too much of a danger - and those don't really have the range to reach the rear.

Being able to target commanders right away wouldn't reflect real combat very well I think.

Sure, any army would LOVE to do it, but the commanders aren't going to make this easy for them. Mostly they'd do this by staying out of range.

I look at it that the replay mode is a bit of an abstraction of a bigger space. Fast unit can ride all the way into the command area perhaps, but being able to shoot that far, even with archers forward seems both unrealistic and unbalancing to me.

We've had to deal with this a lot in table top wargaming usually by making special rules that reflect the fact that the troops on the ground don't have the "omniscient eye" of the player.

Picking out a few people in a huge battle is going to be nearly impossible in most cases.

[ January 26, 2004, 21:40: Message edited by: diamondspider ]

[Lord_Devi]

Commanders are always mounted also however, whereas the infantry isn't. That gives the commanders a much higher profile, not to mention the gigantic pretender gods, hah - but yeah I see your point. It would be kinda menacing to have that ability.

[General Tacticus]

Originally posted by Lord_Devi:
Commanders are always mounted also however, whereas the infantry isn't. That gives the commanders a much higher profile, not to mention the gigantic pretender gods, hah - but yeah I see your point. It would be kinda menacing to have that ability.

Not always... But if they are, you can certainly "fire at large enemy monsters", and nail them. That'll teach them to keep a low profile !

[PhilD]

Here's a feature that I think is missing and would be very cool, but I'm not crossing my fingers...

Ability to script armies in a .map file.

Actually, I'd like to be able to set full orders and positions for the units in a province. This would let one make detailed scenarios, and, most importantly, use the .map file (and an appropriate program to write/change it) as a battle simulator substitute.

Or maybe it would be simpler to have an option for non-crypted .trn files. I understand the need to have non-human-readable .trn files for MP, but I was a bit disappointed that, in SP games, I could still not hack them.