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I'd really also want a simple fallback command whereby the single regiments can gradually fall back while still fighting the enemy... honestly, this one simple feature would make the battles so much more realistic and immersive.
There should be a "tactical retreat" ability or stance for units that will stay in formation, shields up etc.. and gradually move backwards. That way you can have a rear guard action while you move vital troops off the field using the normal retreat / withdraw ability. It would work well to pull back down roads / streets in a town.
Yea! A option to designate your troops with a "roll back" stance, would allow so many diffrent options in battles. For example, in Empire, I allways wanted to put my troops in "frist line, roll back" stance, where the first line would walk to the back of the formation to reload. The same way we can see the Roman legions fighting in HBO "Rome" series.
For that need some reason to keep your front line. If we take a look in multiplayer battles its one dumpster, mostly. There is need to change too many things to make it playable and fun.
I completely agree! Also not quite the same but why did they remove the rally point that was a feature in Shogun 2? It was really nice, allowing you to put a point on the map where routing units who rally would gather automatically without having to micro everything, and it makes sense historically as well
@@TheTerminatorGaming They should've enabled rally point for the campaign map, so that your routing army would know where to retreat to, and wouldn't sail into an enemy port/enemy army just for the sake of using max movement points!
Maybe add in a siege breakthrough escape, where you can try to escape from your defending city at least to save for example your faction heir and all the units possible
@@The_Last_White_Man I'm a little busy this days but I will try to post it this weekend, obviously quoting Terminator and his video. Hopefully more sooner than later we'll see an integral open battle and siege battle rework with mechanics like this. As in the development of Empire CA tried to desing a logistics mechanic that was eliminated in the final version, maybe some of this ideas was considered and left out in the dev process.
Actually, there is a mod currently in development for Rome 2, where the possibility for an orderly retreat or withdrawal from combat exists. The mod, Rome Total Realism IIII, is developed by JaM and what he has done is to give Roman units the possibility to withdraw from combat to regain unit cohesion. Normally, if a unit disengages in Rome 2 from combat, it suffers a moral hit and often breaks, especially when the unit has already lost a significant number of soldiers. In RTR IIII, if the player uses the „withdrawal“ button, the unit disengages very fast from the enemy and can reform later in the course of the battle. The same mechanic applies if a unit actually breaks: it disengages very quickly from combat, like this does not suffer more losses and in many playthroughs I have done, the units rally and return to combat. There is also now a button which is called „rally“, which allows the unit to regain it’s cohesion and fighting effectiveness. Because the other thing what JaM did was to replace unit tiredness with cohesion. The less cohesion, the less effective a unit fights. Units which are taken out of out of combat by the player, can regain cohesion and fighting effectively again. I find this mechanic very realistic. It does make battles longer, because likewise the AI units rally very often and return to combat. There are other innovative battle mechanics in RTR IIII but I thought the one I mentioned above comes close to what has been discussed in the video. I suggest you check out the mod in the Steam Workshop.
Another thing needed is to implement “army baggage train” that would contain food/munition/treasure. If food is low and you are far from a town, you start losing man and moral Munitions are needed to have replenish arrows, javelins catapult projectile for next battle, otherwise your archers can’t use their bows Treasure for when you destroy an army or loot trade rout or cities, it doesn’t come back directly to your budget but you need to bring it to your capital first. So in a battle you could win but some enemies units could take your baggage train to handicap your bigger army supply , moral and your money you just looted from a city
There should also be a way to be able to capture the general of the enemy army as well, for example a war's not going your way and that enemy general happens to be the king, if you defet his bodygaurds and capture him, you could negotiate to end the war, and even gain not only your lost lands, but acquire some of the territory they owned when the war begun in exchange, make his faction a client state, and keep his heir as a hostage in order to get their leader back, as happened with Alexander The Great's Father! Also, trading regions, asking factions to make peace with other factions (which would be incredibly appreciated when you made a faction a client state, and don't want their enemies to seal the dea, thank you very much, Rome!), recognizing the legitimacy of a foreign king to rule his lands (as the Seleucids did for Armenia in the grand campaign's timeline), and the choices in how differently you wish to rule, and the people reacting to that (with the option to respect the people's freedom or rule more authoritarian), and even leaving a settlement peacefully and giving it back to an emergent faction (As Rome did with Dacia IRL).
Excellent points! Having important characters captured be a token in the war would definitely make things more interesting :) and yes all those campaign features would be really good to have!
The AI in the earlier tw games like Rome 1 and in the napoleonic 3 total war mod for NTW does perform a tactical retreat when most of their units have routed.
A tactical retreat/withdrawal also known as Tactical Redeployment or retreating defensive action is a type of military operation, generally meaning that retreating forces draw back while maintaining contact with the enemy. A withdrawal may be undertaken as part of a general retreat, to consolidate forces, to occupy ground that is more easily defended, force the enemy to overextend to secure a decisive victory, or to lead the enemy into an ambush. Keep in mind that this whole operation is a risky undertaking which can easily turn out in a general rout, so to prevent that your army discipline must be at the highest possible.
A lot of modern TW games' issues were already mentioned by Volound on his channel, so I am merely paraphrasing them. - Tactical retreat option seems like one of many things that should've been implemented to TW franchise years ago. You have a good point here. - Warhammerization of TW series was the biggest mistake. It destroyed historical authenticity, made these games arcade-ish and predictable. - It has been said how AI in TW sucks. No need to mention that. There's a reason why in most RTS games there's a distinction between handicap and difficulty. The former gives unfair bonuses to either player or the AI, while the latter improves AI's decision making process. It would be REALLY GOOD, if CA took that seriously and gave us the option to configure AI according to handicap rules and decision making process rules. If there are ultimate chess AIs, then there can be ultimate TW AI that can kick our asses both on campaign and battle maps. - Introduce historical and mythical modes. Three Kingdoms has that, Troy has that too. In WH series it'd mainly serve the purpose of removing unrealistic overleveled heroes that can tank the whole army. - Get consistent. The last truly consistent game in TW franchise was Shogun 2. It played exactly as you'd have expected it to play. Yari Ashigaru could wreck any kind of cavalry. Morale was way more important. Units used to engage is mass-route when proper chain reaction was triggered. Black powder weapons induced heavy morale debuffs. Things can be really quality of life and pleasant, while remain realistic and logical. - NUKE DA CHEESE. For God's grace and all that is good, nuke it. Nuke it so hard, that it'll never be back. While I genuinely enjoy what Legendoftotalwar is doing with WH2, it is entirely unimmersive. All that corner camping, enemy arrow dumping, magic overdose and doomstacking the crap out of enemy... It's just so wrong on every darn level.
TLDR: Volund goes too far on the consistency, and it's immersion breaking The over consistency that volund describes is entirely immersion breaking. Depending on terrain, morale, and chance some units should hold while others break. These battles aren't supposed to be chess, with completely predefined rules and strategies. Volund describes a very boring RTS ultimately.
I agree. The biggest and probably easiest change in this regard would be to create a unit command to "Fall Back". Where the units don't turn and run but back off while facing/fighting the combatants in front of them. This would give the option to give up ground gradually rather than turn into a route. Also, it would allow for feigned withdrawal tactics like Cannae. Another option could be that when the battle begins you get the option of fighting standard or a tactical withdrawal. The latter being a sort of escape scenario but your army is placed nearer to the enemy and you have to use chokepoints and tactics to fight your way backward to an escape point without being overrun.
100% mate, it would be so much more immersive & enjoyable to play to give the order to retreat and manage the battle from there on. Leads to many more interesting engagements!
When I saw that tactical retreat stance in the Manor Lords video I immediately thought "How CA hasn't been able to do this after 20 years doing the same game?"
When you said "tactical retreat" my first thought was about something else (an idea, I really would appreciate in TW): feigning a retreat (an ability by which it will look to the enemy like your troops are actually fleeing the field). On the one hand you can let your troops retreat like you said in the video, on the other hand you can lure the enemy into a trap (or the other way round). This way, I think there would be some additional tactical complexitiy. Because right now if the enemy flees you just run them down with no repercussions whatsoever; with this improvement you would have to actually think about it twice and constantly keep an eye on the persueing unit. Persueing or not persueing would be a matter of tactical choice and consideration.
I thought of the same idea some time ago, when you look at Cannae battle, the Carthage center lines kept fighting but were walking backwards, to allow romans to get envelop with other units that were not moving on the flanks. This right here is the ability we need in Total War, to be able to have units go backwards, slowly sure, but keep facing the enemy and continue fighting if they are attacked.
I must not be understanding quite what you mean, because I'm thinking to myself "doesn't this already exist via the 'Withdraw' button that appears when a unit is selected in battle (provided your army hasn't already retreated on the campaign map) and the boundaries of the battle map act as the 'designated area of retreat'?"
What I mean is instead a single unit withdrawing you order the entire army. By a designated area I mean the direction from which your army is attacking or defending from really. And I guess what I’m really meaning is by going into a sort of tactical withdrawal stance as an army, you get various buffs/penalties and this can lead to a whole new phase of the battle. Feigning retreat, defensive traps, etc. Less of a hunting down random units sort of retreating all over the map.
It's definitely in Med 2 but I though it was in others, where you can manually retreat your units and they will only use the men that are actually killed on the campaign map. Everyone used to use it to whittle down the Mongol horde. Make a like of longbowmen behind stakes. When they run out of ammo retreat them and then attack again with full ammo and new stakes in the next battle. It was also useful if you were defending and got terrible terrain on the map, you could withdraw your forces and get a new map if you were attacked again the same turn. The only thing it needed was for you to be able to retreat from a siege assault without breaking the siege.
Something that is similar to tactical retreat is the battle of teutburg forest for Rome 2 where you need to "retreat" to a certain point in the map and sacrificing some troops to save the eagles.
I would prefer for them to focus on a proper siege system, with proper defences, like we ditches. Sieges should be a series of battles where you can make progress or not.
Yes, it will be nice and logical thing to allow defeated enemy run away on campaign map. Maybe it could be modded when army lost movement points after win batlle like after city capture. About "tactical retreat" on battle map, i will not say that such maneuvers were planned usually. I read about many historical battles while doing my mod and most of them ended as chaotic escape of losed side..
As far as I'm concerned there are 2 major elements that I would like to see in total war battles: 1)Units pushing. You then give all units 3 "stances". An aggressive one, a defensive one and a retreating one. The aggressive one gives a bonus to offense and makes the unit TRY to push. The defensive one gives defence and makes the unit try to hold their ground (they won't push even if they are winning). The retreating one reduces offense and makes the unit try to move backwards (get pushed). Since all units will have to be in one of those stances the final outcome (whether they push or get pushed) will be calculated based on several aspects of battle. Mass is the obvious first. Whether or not your squad is winning or losing the combat would definitely affect pushing power. Obviously, pushing the enemy might seem like a good thing, but it's probably more of a bad thing, so the offensive stance should be the most valuable overall in terms of stats given. The defensive stance should provide a bit of balance and the one that makes you move backwards should effectively make you lose the battle in the end, but your units should keep fighting for longer (it's also the best in terms of causing units to fall into a trap, Hannibal style). Unit depth should definitely affect this process, probably just by counting mass anyway. 2)Command Points Adding "command points" in battles that are spent when you order units to do things. This should go hand in hand with new commands such as ordering your entire army to move forward and attack units as they find them, instead of having to order your units to attack specific enemy squads (they seriously need to add this one). Ordering multiple units to do the same thing at once should be cheaper than ordering individual units one by one. The Better the general, the more commands you can issue per minute or so. I know this will have a lot of issues that will mostly be encountered in sieges, but it would definitely push battles to be more realistic and it would SERIOUSLY feel like having a good commander matters.
Love these ideas. Comments like these are exactly what I was hoping for! Thank you for sharing and hopefully we do see more innovation with mechanics just like these in the future 🙌
They aren't even capable enough to make naval battles or combat animations. Expecting them to implement a way for the player to pull of the most difficult military maneuver ever (an organized retreat) is a bit much.
At first I was confused because i was thinking "you can order your army to withdrawal, and have been able to do that since Rome 1" but then i realized your talking about a full blown mechanic with buffs and penalties, etc, etc. Since Empire, that withdraw option (along with the option to retreat from battle on the campaign battle screen) resulted in your army running very far away from the enemy, in a random direction. In OG Rome and in Medieval II, your army would back away in the general direction from which they came, so, usually, a logical direction toward home, or safety, etc. I'm almost positive, though its been a while since i really played Rome or MedII, that the player could actually control where the armies moved to if they wished. but i might be misremembering
They kinda did this in three kingdoms, a total war game I personally enjoy a lot, wherein if you are ambushed you don’t have to fight to the death you can make it to a retreat point. It’s only in ambushes though…
absolutely correct ... but certainly very complicated to implement. personally I would like to see a system that forces the player to pay attention to their supply lines not only with an amount of food needed to create a unit, but a real caravan accompanying an army and, if this is attacked and destroyed , you'd find yourself without provisions in enemy land.
@@TheTerminatorGaming exactly ... but it must be a real entity that must be defended at any cost, otherwise you have to support the army through raids against villages for example
I'm pretty sure that there is tactical retreat in some total wars as in medieval 2 if you move to edge of the map and there aren't enemiemy units around you can just retreat your units and as long as you don't lose too much % of your army or general it won't be destroyed but like ya said enemy gonna chase so it is a double edged sword.
I personally like the general ability idea. I honestly already use this tactic a lot in Total War Warhammer with heavy ranged factions like Alith Anar. Do what damage I can to a superior force then withdraw so I can have more ammo in case they fight me again. This tactic saved my ass so many times on legendary difficulty playing as him. And having a general ability that maybe slightly increases movement speed around the general for a tactical retreat would aid in that. I do agree you would need to have a better indication of where your current retreat point is, because at the moment having to route an individual and wait to see the path they're taking wastes too much time. Another thought could simply be the general ability could honestly be linked to a trait, "retreat X number of times with % of your force remaining" to rank it up. Instead of needing to make a new ability you could just make specific buffs during a withdrawal, most likely defensive or speed ones, with maybe a reduction in attack chance to hit so its not abused. This option might be the simplest addition they could make and honestly making traits important again in Total War is something very close to my heart.
I don't know if I'm missing something, but isn't this already in total war games? I haven't played any after Rome 2 but I specifically used Triarii to cover the retreat of the rest of my army recently and it actually worked perfectly. There already IS a button to order your units to retreat...right?
yes its called the Withdrawal option, if your army has movement points left on the campaign map. The issue here might be that since Empire, that option (along with the option to retreat from battle on the campaign battle screen) resulted in your army running very far away from the enemy, in a random direction. In OG Rome and in Medieval II, your army would back away in the general direction from which they came, so, usually, a logical direction toward home, or safety, etc. I'm almost positive, though its been a while since i really played Rome or MedII, that the player could actually control where the armies moved to if they wished. but i might be misremembering
I picked up medieval 2 today and that's exactly what's been in my mind the whole day. I would like to go as far as to say that total war is incomplete without this mechanic. I might just drop the series if nothing is done in this front...
I'm personally undecided. It would be cool for sure, but also don't think we need a mechanic for something players can already do for themselves in multi and single.
Id enjoy a mechanic where your army needs to encamp after the turn. If you don't you get big fatigue penalties or attrition. Maybe it could trigger an encampment battle like the ambush where your men are scattered and you need to get them organized.
I think there should be an option to order unit to start moving backwards while facing the opponent and fighting, so you can move your frontline. Also i think army should be unbreakable after tactical retreat since they all are gonna die. And army that defends the city should be unbreakable like in medieval 2
Tactical Retreat would only make sense if there was something to be gained from it, such as damaging the enemy units, or assets Unfortunately this is not currently possible because there is very low "Permanence", in other words, consequences Units replenish each turn, ammo is replenished to max between each battle, damage to buildings has no real impact etc..
Doesn't matter if they ever implement any tactical retreat option on the battlefield as long as there is no new implementation of a retreat option on the campaign map. The turn based campaign style is the only way I can think of to make total war games work and they wont change that. That is totally fine. Implementations like 12 TPY or submods that make the campaign slower paced in general including less movement or a more detailed campaign map with the same result are ways to make the turn based game and the system of army/navy movement one faction/player after another less recognizable but in the end, the one that has the initiative or even starts his turn earlier has a huge advantage (at least in some situations). To address this we NEED a more pro-active way of reacting to an invasion or an attack. If there is an army movement in your territory from the AI or a player, we need to be able to react to it. What I would suggest is that the game will pause if they enter a specific sphere of influence around the army in or outside of your own territory and give you the opportunity to move your army as far as you have movement points in every direction you want. No more silly automatic retreat somewhere else. This way you have much less issues with multiple armies behind each other but outside of reinforcement range and you can actually retreat inside settlements or leave them before the enemy attacks. It just doesnt make sense at all how it has always worked and I am so sick of it working so badly all this time. The size of this sphere should be much bigger in own territory, smaller in enemy or neutral territory and even smaller when the army wasnt spotted the turn before. This way you can even confront the enemy at a river crossing between the armies or march away in the direction you want at the same pace as the enemy. Cavalry armies can still catch up to you because they have more movement but you should be able to avoid a confrontation if you want. I cannot think of a different solution to this problem and I think this could be implemented quite easily and make the game so much more enjoyable. I demand this for the next historical total war and will be very disappointed and upset, if there is no such mechanic.
And since I am already talking about things I need in a new historical total war title. PLEASE, for the love of god, make settlements and cities bigger (and much more customized as well). I dont wanna see all these tiny villages when attacking huge cities. The whole map is supposed to be filled with houses.
I think that's a dope idea. Honestly if they can use the General personality mechanics from 3k and incorporate that into how the AI behaves affecting it's tactics, taking up either offensive, defensive, or retreat and even different formations. There's plenty of possibilities for innovation, the Industry right now is not interested in investing.
What about a campaign side tactical retreat? You use it and you get several movement ranges, the closest means the enemy will never catch you retreating, the second will be a mixed chance type of deal, and the third is a big risk/gamble, since you are likely to be caught and give the enemy more movement that turn and potentially be caught in a worse position. It'd need a better battle map visualization system, but it would allow for a more realistic and useful retreat, which has left me in my underwear more than once in its normal iteration.
I like the concept but in practice I can't see it working. Given TW's mechanics, what can you actually do to safely disengage your frontline? I don't think you could do much more than have your archers prematurely abandon the battle. Given unit replenishment is so generous in all TW games, I think people would almost always push on in the hopes of winning - because it doesn't matter if all your units are at 10% strength, as long as you win, they will be 100% again soon. P.S. You can sort of do this already by running the units you want to save to the edge of the map so that when the army routs they're instantly safe.
Awsome video thought history they are many battles where a few units held the the so the rest can escape. CA could give an ability to certain units that excel at this.
I have a different approach to that, which would simultaniously make the battles more epic and the armies bigger: I always hated how armies in Total War were only a few thousand men instead of the historical tens of thousands. How would you solve this without breaking proportions on the field? Let armies have actually 10k men or more on the campaign map. But still fight battles with the cap of 40 units per side. That way, even if you loose a battle, or even several, you still have an army to fight with. It would make for such en epic back and forth and would also be closer to reality, since most battles back in the day consisted of many smaller skirmishes. I doubt we could see this any time soon. Maybe in one of the next historical titles. Tell me what you think of this!
The main issue I see with this is micromanagement. You would be in charge of not a couple dozen at most but 50-100 unts which just sounds insane. You would have to buff melee defence and lower speed I think to compensate so you’re not zooming around all the time. It would be epic but I’m not sure I’d enjoy playing it. Thoughts?
@@TheTerminatorGaming I think you misunderstood me there. I meant that the actual battles would still be the same size as they are now! 20 units standart and max 40 units! Would be upt to you how many you'd like to control. But the army wouldn't be destroyed if you lost a battle and you could retreat to fight again, since you still have lots of men in reserve :)
Yes, but at least its a more involved tactic this way instead of you aimlessly running down fleeing enemies by the end or vice versa. It would be a mechanics to factor into every battle.
@@TheTerminatorGaming Here's an idea, unit initiative. What I mean is that a unit would decide on its own volition on whether or not to engage another enemy unit unless you order it to do otherwise. It would base it's decision on favorite such as enemy strength, fatigue, numbers, quality, match up, and others that I don't recall. However it would be done within close proximity of around 30 to 50 meters. This is to alleviate the micromanagement tax of the player and represent the unit officer's decision making. The player will still have the final say in "ordering" the unit to hold ground, skirmish, move, etc.
So you want a withdraw button with a rally point? Because you can already withdraw from a fight and force the AI to chase you. Actually if you go into a battle and withdraw you get a bonus flee distance on the campaign map rather than just retreating pre battle. And if your asking CA to have the AI do this then you're asking for a new exploitation for the players to run down tactically withdrawing enemies and force them into a full retreat before they can get back to their rally point. I like the idea but there's no way to implement it without it being cheesy.
I think the point I’m trying to make here is you play a battle to win, thats it. If you lose 90% of the time your army routs and you take heavy losses. The controlled withdrawal mechanic in Total War battles isn’t developed enough imo and the point I’m trying to make here is if it was (in an efficient way that hopefully negates any obvious exploitation) it could lead to more interesting and slower paced battles. Also the withdraw button essentially is a run for your lives button. I’m talking more of a put your army into a withdraw stance type of situation that can feign a retreat, lead to traps, controlled exit of the battlefield, type situations.
This all went downhill when CA decided that a freaking BATTLE should be over in ten minutes or less... If campaign mechanics were richer and deeper (like Crusader Kings), you could spend a good chunk of gameplay interacting on the campaign map, giving orders, engaging in politics, enacting laws and reforms, growing your economy, engaging in diplomacy and intrigue AND preparing things like fortifications, rally points for retreating armies, choosing the best possible location for defensive battles, and then actual battles would feel like these epic turning points in wars where if you lose your army, it's guaranteed you will lose a chunk of your empire by the time you build back and are able to engage in another decisive battle. The way it is now, it's as if a 10 minute anticlimactic skirmish is what decides the fate of your empire... screw that. This is why I CAN'T play TW without mods
Well it's quite clear on my front. Total War battles have taken a step back to focus more on the campaign side that follows a certain linear path such as Troy and 3k despite playing them in a sandbox mode. Thoughts on that? Total War however will become more tactical again once the new historical title is announced because if it's one thing for certain, total war fans know directly how to keep CA accountable...they'll go on reddit and discord and revolt xD, kidding, but the total war community - especially for those of us that like historical will make sure CA keeps to their ground, and not go the Warhammer 2 battle style route (which will not work at all in the next historical total war and I do not want it to be fast paced. Please, make it slower for once.)
@@TheTerminatorGaming Total War was arcadey from the start - go back to RTW and it was very arcadey - mods slowed it down a bit. Not to discount however that vanilla battles do have some tactics/stragety to fight with. I just don't like the reliance on using missile infantry to literally wipe out battalions of infantry in mere seconds. That's just a waste. Rather do it like in Rome 2 MP.
tactical retreat is nothing new, in my R2TR4 mod there are unit and general abilities that do just that - make unit faster so it can disengage from combat (for General, its Rally ability which was modified to do exactly that).. i have even modified amount of casualties taken from retreat (after battle) so you can actually accept defeat and not get utterly crushed by autoresolve post battle.. of course, huge maps dont help as well, because shattered AI units cant get out of combat with determined player who will chase them down (shallower battle maps could be a solution) FIght to the death is a lot bigger problem.. originally i thought its hardcoded and second battle is always to the death.. but its actually result of the fact that army always retreats its max remaining movement points, and if It doesn't have any, its wiped out.. so CA could fix that by making armies not retreat all the way, but just out of ZoC of enemy army.... but i guess they were against it, because they wanted faster more decisive gameplay (and therefore armies are wiped out)
Someone else alerted me to this feature in your mod JaM. I’ll be checking it out this weekend! Possible spotlight on the way ❤️ Do you have a discord server?
@@TheTerminatorGaming yeah, i do, but because i'm working on mod alone, i only use it to track my changelogs or ideas i want to explore. R2TR was dead for quite some time, practically after last official patch.. When i returned back to R2 modding earlier this year, i practically rebuilt the thing from scratch :) But i might open the discord for public in nearest future.
How about less focus on graphics and more focus on bigger battles i mean for petes sake other strategy games have noticed that having insane graphics just eats on the computers performance and wont allow you to have big battles that last for longer than 5min.
I've never really thought about a tactical retreat but it makes sense if it were implemented but come now we all know it won't be cause total war is like Ford, Ford used to make great vehicles but now they usually end up being shit in terms of reliability. What total war needs is competition of the genre it needs to be forced to innovate and maintain quality in order to have what we should have already had by now.
You realise this is already in every Total War game, right? If you've got the ability to retreat from a battle (ie not out of movement points or already having withdrawn once) every unit has a little flag button on the bottom right that you can click and they'll retreat towards the red line.
Yes but thats a button mate. I’m talking about an actual retreat mechanic where you have a specific zone of retreat, your army changes stance and gains buffs or penalties due to the order, etc. At the moment you can retreat anywhere, there’s no uniformity or organisation to it. I’m talking about battles that can go from fighting it out to, I have to get as many of my forces to THIS position to survive this.
@@TheTerminatorGaming what's the point of going from "you can retreat anywhere" to "you need to retreat in this tiny box"? The withdraw button works fine as a "tactical retreat" option, the reason it's never used is because an even moderately competent player will never get in a position where they should retreat and can. Either the battle will not be in their favour and they will withdraw on the strategic map or they won't be able to retreat at all and have to fight.
For me as I said in the video 1. Its more immersive because I dont really like running enemy units down all over the map and 2. Its just expanding on a mechanic thats barely used. Maybe the player wont use it much but the AI might, which could make things more interesting to play (if implemented correctly of course).
I appreciate how you never ignore the Warhammers and use them to give examples when talking about the Total War series in general. Some channels straight up ignore the fact that there IS Warhammer games and there ARE a SH*T ton of people playing them. It's okay if people don't play/like Warhammer games, even you don't play the Warhammer TWs much, maybe you never play them at all, but you mention them just like any other TW games you mention in your videos. That's the kind of "uniting" we need to have within the TW community. Unlike what the historical elitists and the warhammer weebs are doing
Appreciate it :) I personally love the Warhammer games and as you said it would be elitist to ignore their contribution to the franchise. Been thinking lately about how interesting it would be to see statistics on how many total war players play either historical or fantasy and the overlap. For all we know there’s not much of a divide at all :)
wouldn't a god mode be easier to make? you would not loose units and everybody would be happy? you know? I really love that "word I can't pronounce here" about historical and every damn campaign starts with let's take all the money the friendly factions is giving us , the most historical feature this game has.......
I have to say I respectfully disagree: An organised tactical retreat is widely regarded as the most difficult manoeuvre for any army throughout history to accomplish. Unless your army is entirely cavalry, the likelihood of it descending into a disordered route where the army is butchered piecemeal is very large. I have to say, of the many dreams I have for additional historical aspects to Total War games, this might rank bottom.
Fair enough, I mean I don’t think it should be something necessarily easy to pull off but I think it would be better than units running around all over the map. Imagine a line of phalanx infantry holding up the enemy advance while walking backwards while the rest of the army behind them retreats to a specific square area. Once you’re comfortable everyone you want is in the zone you withdraw from the battle. It doesn’t mean you’re not going to take casualties, it just means you actually live to fight another day (sometimes) rather than getting obliterated 100% of the time when you lose.
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What do you think about the idea of a "Tactical Retreat" option in Total War?
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Hey Terminator would you ever do a let’s play on mount and blade banner lord?
I could do :) Been watching lots of videos lately on it so why not!
I'd really also want a simple fallback command whereby the single regiments can gradually fall back while still fighting the enemy... honestly, this one simple feature would make the battles so much more realistic and immersive.
Absolutely! I think this would be a simple version of my brainstorm would it would still be far better than random running around!
There should be a "tactical retreat" ability or stance for units that will stay in formation, shields up etc.. and gradually move backwards.
That way you can have a rear guard action while you move vital troops off the field using the normal retreat / withdraw ability.
It would work well to pull back down roads / streets in a town.
Manor Lords will have a fallback command where the troops won't turn their back in order to move backward. I hope CA will implement that feature.
Yea! A option to designate your troops with a "roll back" stance, would allow so many diffrent options in battles. For example, in Empire, I allways wanted to put my troops in "frist line, roll back" stance, where the first line would walk to the back of the formation to reload. The same way we can see the Roman legions fighting in HBO "Rome" series.
For that need some reason to keep your front line. If we take a look in multiplayer battles its one dumpster, mostly. There is need to change too many things to make it playable and fun.
slowly pull back as units swing out from the back on the flanks to wrap around the enemy would work great for dealing with the pike spam
I completely agree!
Also not quite the same but why did they remove the rally point that was a feature in Shogun 2? It was really nice, allowing you to put a point on the map where routing units who rally would gather automatically without having to micro everything, and it makes sense historically as well
Great point :)
@@TheTerminatorGaming They should've enabled rally point for the campaign map, so that your routing army would know where to retreat to, and wouldn't sail into an enemy port/enemy army just for the sake of using max movement points!
Absolutely mate, this is a feature I have seen and read about. Kind of like setting a route which your army takes to retreat
Maybe add in a siege breakthrough escape, where you can try to escape from your defending city at least to save for example your faction heir and all the units possible
That would also be amazing! Good point mate :)
Nice. Please write it on TW Discord Feedback.
👍👍👍
@@The_Last_White_Man I'm a little busy this days but I will try to post it this weekend, obviously quoting Terminator and his video. Hopefully more sooner than later we'll see an integral open battle and siege battle rework with mechanics like this. As in the development of Empire CA tried to desing a logistics mechanic that was eliminated in the final version, maybe some of this ideas was considered and left out in the dev process.
its a very good idea !!
This could actually work as something of a new battle mode. Pretty cool concept
Actually, there is a mod currently in development for Rome 2, where the possibility for an orderly retreat or withdrawal from combat exists. The mod, Rome Total Realism IIII, is developed by JaM and what he has done is to give Roman units the possibility to withdraw from combat to regain unit cohesion. Normally, if a unit disengages in Rome 2 from combat, it suffers a moral hit and often breaks, especially when the unit has already lost a significant number of soldiers. In RTR IIII, if the player uses the „withdrawal“ button, the unit disengages very fast from the enemy and can reform later in the course of the battle. The same mechanic applies if a unit actually breaks: it disengages very quickly from combat, like this does not suffer more losses and in many playthroughs I have done, the units rally and return to combat. There is also now a button which is called „rally“, which allows the unit to regain it’s cohesion and fighting effectiveness. Because the other thing what JaM did was to replace unit tiredness with cohesion. The less cohesion, the less effective a unit fights. Units which are taken out of out of combat by the player, can regain cohesion and fighting effectively again.
I find this mechanic very realistic. It does make battles longer, because likewise the AI units rally very often and return to combat.
There are other innovative battle mechanics in RTR IIII but I thought the one I mentioned above comes close to what has been discussed in the video. I suggest you check out the mod in the Steam Workshop.
This sounds amazing! I’ve had my eye on RTR IIII for a while now I’ll definitely check it out :)
Another thing needed is to implement “army baggage train” that would contain food/munition/treasure.
If food is low and you are far from a town, you start losing man and moral
Munitions are needed to have replenish arrows, javelins catapult projectile for next battle, otherwise your archers can’t use their bows
Treasure for when you destroy an army or loot trade rout or cities, it doesn’t come back directly to your budget but you need to bring it to your capital first.
So in a battle you could win but some enemies units could take your baggage train to handicap your bigger army supply , moral and your money you just looted from a city
There should also be a way to be able to capture the general of the enemy army as well, for example a war's not going your way and that enemy general happens to be the king, if you defet his bodygaurds and capture him, you could negotiate to end the war, and even gain not only your lost lands, but acquire some of the territory they owned when the war begun in exchange, make his faction a client state, and keep his heir as a hostage in order to get their leader back, as happened with Alexander The Great's Father!
Also, trading regions, asking factions to make peace with other factions (which would be incredibly appreciated when you made a faction a client state, and don't want their enemies to seal the dea, thank you very much, Rome!), recognizing the legitimacy of a foreign king to rule his lands (as the Seleucids did for Armenia in the grand campaign's timeline), and the choices in how differently you wish to rule, and the people reacting to that (with the option to respect the people's freedom or rule more authoritarian), and even leaving a settlement peacefully and giving it back to an emergent faction (As Rome did with Dacia IRL).
Excellent points! Having important characters captured be a token in the war would definitely make things more interesting :) and yes all those campaign features would be really good to have!
They would sell those things as new features... ignoring that you could already do those things in medieval2 :(
@@fadope1612 Not if they had some competition that forced them to innovate and be good at what they do or die.
Try investing in Manor Lords.
In my empire tw mod I made it so units break pretty easy but recover quickly to simulate a tactical withdrawal type scenario on the smaller scale.
Oh mate! I still need to spotlight Empire Extended :) I've got it on my list so will make sure to do it soon
@@TheTerminatorGaming no worries, it's a work in progress :) let me know before you do and I'll send you the latest build
Sounds good 👍
The AI in the earlier tw games like Rome 1 and in the napoleonic 3 total war mod for NTW does perform a tactical retreat when most of their units have routed.
I appreciate that and my hope is the feature becomes more regular and developed in future games :)
A tactical retreat/withdrawal also known as Tactical Redeployment or retreating defensive action is a type of military operation, generally meaning that retreating forces draw back while maintaining contact with the enemy. A withdrawal may be undertaken as part of a general retreat, to consolidate forces, to occupy ground that is more easily defended, force the enemy to overextend to secure a decisive victory, or to lead the enemy into an ambush.
Keep in mind that this whole operation is a risky undertaking which can easily turn out in a general rout, so to prevent that your army discipline must be at the highest possible.
A lot of modern TW games' issues were already mentioned by Volound on his channel, so I am merely paraphrasing them.
- Tactical retreat option seems like one of many things that should've been implemented to TW franchise years ago. You have a good point here.
- Warhammerization of TW series was the biggest mistake. It destroyed historical authenticity, made these games arcade-ish and predictable.
- It has been said how AI in TW sucks. No need to mention that. There's a reason why in most RTS games there's a distinction between handicap and difficulty. The former gives unfair bonuses to either player or the AI, while the latter improves AI's decision making process. It would be REALLY GOOD, if CA took that seriously and gave us the option to configure AI according to handicap rules and decision making process rules. If there are ultimate chess AIs, then there can be ultimate TW AI that can kick our asses both on campaign and battle maps.
- Introduce historical and mythical modes. Three Kingdoms has that, Troy has that too. In WH series it'd mainly serve the purpose of removing unrealistic overleveled heroes that can tank the whole army.
- Get consistent. The last truly consistent game in TW franchise was Shogun 2. It played exactly as you'd have expected it to play. Yari Ashigaru could wreck any kind of cavalry. Morale was way more important. Units used to engage is mass-route when proper chain reaction was triggered. Black powder weapons induced heavy morale debuffs. Things can be really quality of life and pleasant, while remain realistic and logical.
- NUKE DA CHEESE. For God's grace and all that is good, nuke it. Nuke it so hard, that it'll never be back. While I genuinely enjoy what Legendoftotalwar is doing with WH2, it is entirely unimmersive. All that corner camping, enemy arrow dumping, magic overdose and doomstacking the crap out of enemy... It's just so wrong on every darn level.
TLDR: Volund goes too far on the consistency, and it's immersion breaking
The over consistency that volund describes is entirely immersion breaking. Depending on terrain, morale, and chance some units should hold while others break. These battles aren't supposed to be chess, with completely predefined rules and strategies. Volund describes a very boring RTS ultimately.
I agree. The biggest and probably easiest change in this regard would be to create a unit command to "Fall Back". Where the units don't turn and run but back off while facing/fighting the combatants in front of them. This would give the option to give up ground gradually rather than turn into a route. Also, it would allow for feigned withdrawal tactics like Cannae. Another option could be that when the battle begins you get the option of fighting standard or a tactical withdrawal. The latter being a sort of escape scenario but your army is placed nearer to the enemy and you have to use chokepoints and tactics to fight your way backward to an escape point without being overrun.
100% mate, it would be so much more immersive & enjoyable to play to give the order to retreat and manage the battle from there on. Leads to many more interesting engagements!
Isn't that what the retreat option is on the battle map?
You can raise the white flag and make it to the boarder.
When I saw that tactical retreat stance in the Manor Lords video I immediately thought "How CA hasn't been able to do this after 20 years doing the same game?"
100000% my good sir. Its because. CA DOES NOT INNOVATE.
When you said "tactical retreat" my first thought was about something else (an idea, I really would appreciate in TW): feigning a retreat (an ability by which it will look to the enemy like your troops are actually fleeing the field). On the one hand you can let your troops retreat like you said in the video, on the other hand you can lure the enemy into a trap (or the other way round). This way, I think there would be some additional tactical complexitiy. Because right now if the enemy flees you just run them down with no repercussions whatsoever; with this improvement you would have to actually think about it twice and constantly keep an eye on the persueing unit. Persueing or not persueing would be a matter of tactical choice and consideration.
Good points :) Feigning a retreat or setting up a trap would be interesting 🧐
Yes, I 100% agree. It is nice that Manor lords is going to have that option. Nice video!
Indeed! Thanks bud :)
@@TheTerminatorGaming U always need to take step back, so u can go 2 steps further.
manor lord is like castle simulator
I thought of the same idea some time ago, when you look at Cannae battle, the Carthage center lines kept fighting but were walking backwards, to allow romans to get envelop with other units that were not moving on the flanks.
This right here is the ability we need in Total War, to be able to have units go backwards, slowly sure, but keep facing the enemy and continue fighting if they are attacked.
Absolutely mate!
I must not be understanding quite what you mean, because I'm thinking to myself "doesn't this already exist via the 'Withdraw' button that appears when a unit is selected in battle (provided your army hasn't already retreated on the campaign map) and the boundaries of the battle map act as the 'designated area of retreat'?"
What I mean is instead a single unit withdrawing you order the entire army. By a designated area I mean the direction from which your army is attacking or defending from really. And I guess what I’m really meaning is by going into a sort of tactical withdrawal stance as an army, you get various buffs/penalties and this can lead to a whole new phase of the battle. Feigning retreat, defensive traps, etc. Less of a hunting down random units sort of retreating all over the map.
What we need is a new historical setting total war, medieval 3 maybe? :)
Haha yes that too ❤️
the closest you can get is 1212 mod for Attila.
It's definitely in Med 2 but I though it was in others, where you can manually retreat your units and they will only use the men that are actually killed on the campaign map. Everyone used to use it to whittle down the Mongol horde. Make a like of longbowmen behind stakes. When they run out of ammo retreat them and then attack again with full ammo and new stakes in the next battle. It was also useful if you were defending and got terrible terrain on the map, you could withdraw your forces and get a new map if you were attacked again the same turn.
The only thing it needed was for you to be able to retreat from a siege assault without breaking the siege.
Something that is similar to tactical retreat is the battle of teutburg forest for Rome 2 where you need to "retreat" to a certain point in the map and sacrificing some troops to save the eagles.
I would prefer for them to focus on a proper siege system, with proper defences, like we ditches. Sieges should be a series of battles where you can make progress or not.
I agree. Add a morale debuff after a tact-ret on the next turn, say lasting for 2 turns. That would also make the player think twice as well.
Absolutely!
Yes, it will be nice and logical thing to allow defeated enemy run away on campaign map. Maybe it could be modded when army lost movement points after win batlle like after city capture.
About "tactical retreat" on battle map, i will not say that such maneuvers were planned usually. I read about many historical battles while doing my mod and most of them ended as chaotic escape of losed side..
As far as I'm concerned there are 2 major elements that I would like to see in total war battles:
1)Units pushing.
You then give all units 3 "stances". An aggressive one, a defensive one and a retreating one.
The aggressive one gives a bonus to offense and makes the unit TRY to push. The defensive one gives defence and makes the unit try to hold their ground (they won't push even if they are winning). The retreating one reduces offense and makes the unit try to move backwards (get pushed). Since all units will have to be in one of those stances the final outcome (whether they push or get pushed) will be calculated based on several aspects of battle. Mass is the obvious first. Whether or not your squad is winning or losing the combat would definitely affect pushing power. Obviously, pushing the enemy might seem like a good thing, but it's probably more of a bad thing, so the offensive stance should be the most valuable overall in terms of stats given. The defensive stance should provide a bit of balance and the one that makes you move backwards should effectively make you lose the battle in the end, but your units should keep fighting for longer (it's also the best in terms of causing units to fall into a trap, Hannibal style). Unit depth should definitely affect this process, probably just by counting mass anyway.
2)Command Points
Adding "command points" in battles that are spent when you order units to do things. This should go hand in hand with new commands such as ordering your entire army to move forward and attack units as they find them, instead of having to order your units to attack specific enemy squads (they seriously need to add this one). Ordering multiple units to do the same thing at once should be cheaper than ordering individual units one by one. The Better the general, the more commands you can issue per minute or so. I know this will have a lot of issues that will mostly be encountered in sieges, but it would definitely push battles to be more realistic and it would SERIOUSLY feel like having a good commander matters.
Love these ideas. Comments like these are exactly what I was hoping for! Thank you for sharing and hopefully we do see more innovation with mechanics just like these in the future 🙌
They aren't even capable enough to make naval battles or combat animations. Expecting them to implement a way for the player to pull of the most difficult military maneuver ever (an organized retreat) is a bit much.
As we seen in mannor lords, dude just did in one day! 🤯
Yes!! Can’t wait to see the game at release and CA sweat at the sight of competition 😂
At first I was confused because i was thinking "you can order your army to withdrawal, and have been able to do that since Rome 1" but then i realized your talking about a full blown mechanic with buffs and penalties, etc, etc. Since Empire, that withdraw option (along with the option to retreat from battle on the campaign battle screen) resulted in your army running very far away from the enemy, in a random direction. In OG Rome and in Medieval II, your army would back away in the general direction from which they came, so, usually, a logical direction toward home, or safety, etc. I'm almost positive, though its been a while since i really played Rome or MedII, that the player could actually control where the armies moved to if they wished. but i might be misremembering
They kinda did this in three kingdoms, a total war game I personally enjoy a lot, wherein if you are ambushed you don’t have to fight to the death you can make it to a retreat point. It’s only in ambushes though…
I do want to be able to control where my army retreats to on the campaign map.
absolutely correct ... but certainly very complicated to implement. personally I would like to see a system that forces the player to pay attention to their supply lines not only with an amount of food needed to create a unit, but a real caravan accompanying an army and, if this is attacked and destroyed , you'd find yourself without provisions in enemy land.
That would be cool, like a more complex version of the baggage train unit in DEI Rome 2
@@TheTerminatorGaming exactly ... but it must be a real entity that must be defended at any cost, otherwise you have to support the army through raids against villages for example
I'm pretty sure that there is tactical retreat in some total wars as in medieval 2 if you move to edge of the map and there aren't enemiemy units around you can just retreat your units and as long as you don't lose too much % of your army or general it won't be destroyed but like ya said enemy gonna chase so it is a double edged sword.
I personally like the general ability idea. I honestly already use this tactic a lot in Total War Warhammer with heavy ranged factions like Alith Anar. Do what damage I can to a superior force then withdraw so I can have more ammo in case they fight me again. This tactic saved my ass so many times on legendary difficulty playing as him. And having a general ability that maybe slightly increases movement speed around the general for a tactical retreat would aid in that. I do agree you would need to have a better indication of where your current retreat point is, because at the moment having to route an individual and wait to see the path they're taking wastes too much time.
Another thought could simply be the general ability could honestly be linked to a trait, "retreat X number of times with % of your force remaining" to rank it up. Instead of needing to make a new ability you could just make specific buffs during a withdrawal, most likely defensive or speed ones, with maybe a reduction in attack chance to hit so its not abused. This option might be the simplest addition they could make and honestly making traits important again in Total War is something very close to my heart.
Yeah I was thinking a trait would be cool for it. Thanks for the comment mate :)
@@TheTerminatorGaming the algorithm demands sacrifices and I shall provide!
❤️❤️❤️ Even so great ideas here :)
I don't know if I'm missing something, but isn't this already in total war games? I haven't played any after Rome 2 but I specifically used Triarii to cover the retreat of the rest of my army recently and it actually worked perfectly. There already IS a button to order your units to retreat...right?
yes its called the Withdrawal option, if your army has movement points left on the campaign map. The issue here might be that since Empire, that option (along with the option to retreat from battle on the campaign battle screen) resulted in your army running very far away from the enemy, in a random direction. In OG Rome and in Medieval II, your army would back away in the general direction from which they came, so, usually, a logical direction toward home, or safety, etc. I'm almost positive, though its been a while since i really played Rome or MedII, that the player could actually control where the armies moved to if they wished. but i might be misremembering
I picked up medieval 2 today and that's exactly what's been in my mind the whole day. I would like to go as far as to say that total war is incomplete without this mechanic. I might just drop the series if nothing is done in this front...
I'm personally undecided. It would be cool for sure, but also don't think we need a mechanic for something players can already do for themselves in multi and single.
Id enjoy a mechanic where your army needs to encamp after the turn. If you don't you get big fatigue penalties or attrition. Maybe it could trigger an encampment battle like the ambush where your men are scattered and you need to get them organized.
That would be awesome :)
In naleon and empire that is a good tactic
True :) but it could be better, more concrete and it never got carried over or developed properly in later games
@@TheTerminatorGaming i hope that CA will do more games like empire or napoleon
I think there should be an option to order unit to start moving backwards while facing the opponent and fighting, so you can move your frontline. Also i think army should be unbreakable after tactical retreat since they all are gonna die. And army that defends the city should be unbreakable like in medieval 2
Tactical Retreat would only make sense if there was something to be gained from it, such as damaging the enemy units, or assets
Unfortunately this is not currently possible because there is very low "Permanence", in other words, consequences
Units replenish each turn, ammo is replenished to max between each battle, damage to buildings has no real impact etc..
Feign retreats don't work too because you're opponent knows if you're just doing a maneuver or actually routing.
Doesn't matter if they ever implement any tactical retreat option on the battlefield as long as there is no new implementation of a retreat option on the campaign map. The turn based campaign style is the only way I can think of to make total war games work and they wont change that. That is totally fine. Implementations like 12 TPY or submods that make the campaign slower paced in general including less movement or a more detailed campaign map with the same result are ways to make the turn based game and the system of army/navy movement one faction/player after another less recognizable but in the end, the one that has the initiative or even starts his turn earlier has a huge advantage (at least in some situations). To address this we NEED a more pro-active way of reacting to an invasion or an attack. If there is an army movement in your territory from the AI or a player, we need to be able to react to it. What I would suggest is that the game will pause if they enter a specific sphere of influence around the army in or outside of your own territory and give you the opportunity to move your army as far as you have movement points in every direction you want. No more silly automatic retreat somewhere else. This way you have much less issues with multiple armies behind each other but outside of reinforcement range and you can actually retreat inside settlements or leave them before the enemy attacks. It just doesnt make sense at all how it has always worked and I am so sick of it working so badly all this time. The size of this sphere should be much bigger in own territory, smaller in enemy or neutral territory and even smaller when the army wasnt spotted the turn before. This way you can even confront the enemy at a river crossing between the armies or march away in the direction you want at the same pace as the enemy. Cavalry armies can still catch up to you because they have more movement but you should be able to avoid a confrontation if you want. I cannot think of a different solution to this problem and I think this could be implemented quite easily and make the game so much more enjoyable. I demand this for the next historical total war and will be very disappointed and upset, if there is no such mechanic.
And since I am already talking about things I need in a new historical total war title. PLEASE, for the love of god, make settlements and cities bigger (and much more customized as well). I dont wanna see all these tiny villages when attacking huge cities. The whole map is supposed to be filled with houses.
id like something that allows my troops to keep fighting but move backwards pulling the enemy into a trap or a better position
I think that's a dope idea. Honestly if they can use the General personality mechanics from 3k and incorporate that into how the AI behaves affecting it's tactics, taking up either offensive, defensive, or retreat and even different formations. There's plenty of possibilities for innovation, the Industry right now is not interested in investing.
What about a campaign side tactical retreat? You use it and you get several movement ranges, the closest means the enemy will never catch you retreating, the second will be a mixed chance type of deal, and the third is a big risk/gamble, since you are likely to be caught and give the enemy more movement that turn and potentially be caught in a worse position.
It'd need a better battle map visualization system, but it would allow for a more realistic and useful retreat, which has left me in my underwear more than once in its normal iteration.
I like the concept but in practice I can't see it working. Given TW's mechanics, what can you actually do to safely disengage your frontline? I don't think you could do much more than have your archers prematurely abandon the battle. Given unit replenishment is so generous in all TW games, I think people would almost always push on in the hopes of winning - because it doesn't matter if all your units are at 10% strength, as long as you win, they will be 100% again soon.
P.S. You can sort of do this already by running the units you want to save to the edge of the map so that when the army routs they're instantly safe.
There is a game in development that have this feature Called Manor lords and it looks really awesome, imagine if this was in a total war game.
I know I spotlighted it! I cannot wait mate Manor Lords is going to be the Total War killer we’re waiting for :)
never thought about that; good point anyway!
Thanks bud :)
Awsome video thought history they are many battles where a few units held the the so the rest can escape. CA could give an ability to certain units that excel at this.
Absolutely!
I need this to raid with the step riders
I have a different approach to that, which would simultaniously make the battles more epic and the armies bigger: I always hated how armies in Total War were only a few thousand men instead of the historical tens of thousands. How would you solve this without breaking proportions on the field? Let armies have actually 10k men or more on the campaign map. But still fight battles with the cap of 40 units per side. That way, even if you loose a battle, or even several, you still have an army to fight with. It would make for such en epic back and forth and would also be closer to reality, since most battles back in the day consisted of many smaller skirmishes. I doubt we could see this any time soon. Maybe in one of the next historical titles. Tell me what you think of this!
The main issue I see with this is micromanagement. You would be in charge of not a couple dozen at most but 50-100 unts which just sounds insane. You would have to buff melee defence and lower speed I think to compensate so you’re not zooming around all the time.
It would be epic but I’m not sure I’d enjoy playing it. Thoughts?
@@TheTerminatorGaming I think you misunderstood me there. I meant that the actual battles would still be the same size as they are now! 20 units standart and max 40 units! Would be upt to you how many you'd like to control. But the army wouldn't be destroyed if you lost a battle and you could retreat to fight again, since you still have lots of men in reserve :)
Oh sorry I did misunderstand! I think yeah technology is the only barrier there, I’d love to see that! 😍
There’s already a retreat button it’s your job to get your troops out
There are plans to retreat and there's the act to retreat. You need to remember that plans don't tend to survive contact.
Yes, but at least its a more involved tactic this way instead of you aimlessly running down fleeing enemies by the end or vice versa. It would be a mechanics to factor into every battle.
@@TheTerminatorGaming Here's an idea, unit initiative. What I mean is that a unit would decide on its own volition on whether or not to engage another enemy unit unless you order it to do otherwise. It would base it's decision on favorite such as enemy strength, fatigue, numbers, quality, match up, and others that I don't recall. However it would be done within close proximity of around 30 to 50 meters. This is to alleviate the micromanagement tax of the player and represent the unit officer's decision making. The player will still have the final say in "ordering" the unit to hold ground, skirmish, move, etc.
So you want a withdraw button with a rally point? Because you can already withdraw from a fight and force the AI to chase you. Actually if you go into a battle and withdraw you get a bonus flee distance on the campaign map rather than just retreating pre battle. And if your asking CA to have the AI do this then you're asking for a new exploitation for the players to run down tactically withdrawing enemies and force them into a full retreat before they can get back to their rally point. I like the idea but there's no way to implement it without it being cheesy.
I think the point I’m trying to make here is you play a battle to win, thats it. If you lose 90% of the time your army routs and you take heavy losses. The controlled withdrawal mechanic in Total War battles isn’t developed enough imo and the point I’m trying to make here is if it was (in an efficient way that hopefully negates any obvious exploitation) it could lead to more interesting and slower paced battles.
Also the withdraw button essentially is a run for your lives button. I’m talking more of a put your army into a withdraw stance type of situation that can feign a retreat, lead to traps, controlled exit of the battlefield, type situations.
This all went downhill when CA decided that a freaking BATTLE should be over in ten minutes or less... If campaign mechanics were richer and deeper (like Crusader Kings), you could spend a good chunk of gameplay interacting on the campaign map, giving orders, engaging in politics, enacting laws and reforms, growing your economy, engaging in diplomacy and intrigue AND preparing things like fortifications, rally points for retreating armies, choosing the best possible location for defensive battles, and then actual battles would feel like these epic turning points in wars where if you lose your army, it's guaranteed you will lose a chunk of your empire by the time you build back and are able to engage in another decisive battle. The way it is now, it's as if a 10 minute anticlimactic skirmish is what decides the fate of your empire... screw that. This is why I CAN'T play TW without mods
Well it's quite clear on my front. Total War battles have taken a step back to focus more on the campaign side that follows a certain linear path such as Troy and 3k despite playing them in a sandbox mode. Thoughts on that?
Total War however will become more tactical again once the new historical title is announced because if it's one thing for certain, total war fans know directly how to keep CA accountable...they'll go on reddit and discord and revolt xD, kidding, but the total war community - especially for those of us that like historical will make sure CA keeps to their ground, and not go the Warhammer 2 battle style route (which will not work at all in the next historical total war and I do not want it to be fast paced. Please, make it slower for once.)
Eh I don’t know I think both Campaign and Battle gameplay is a bit meh at the moment. Everything is just getting too arcady.
@@TheTerminatorGaming Total War was arcadey from the start - go back to RTW and it was very arcadey - mods slowed it down a bit. Not to discount however that vanilla battles do have some tactics/stragety to fight with. I just don't like the reliance on using missile infantry to literally wipe out battalions of infantry in mere seconds. That's just a waste. Rather do it like in Rome 2 MP.
tactical retreat is nothing new, in my R2TR4 mod there are unit and general abilities that do just that - make unit faster so it can disengage from combat (for General, its Rally ability which was modified to do exactly that).. i have even modified amount of casualties taken from retreat (after battle) so you can actually accept defeat and not get utterly crushed by autoresolve post battle.. of course, huge maps dont help as well, because shattered AI units cant get out of combat with determined player who will chase them down (shallower battle maps could be a solution)
FIght to the death is a lot bigger problem.. originally i thought its hardcoded and second battle is always to the death.. but its actually result of the fact that army always retreats its max remaining movement points, and if It doesn't have any, its wiped out.. so CA could fix that by making armies not retreat all the way, but just out of ZoC of enemy army.... but i guess they were against it, because they wanted faster more decisive gameplay (and therefore armies are wiped out)
Someone else alerted me to this feature in your mod JaM. I’ll be checking it out this weekend! Possible spotlight on the way ❤️ Do you have a discord server?
@@TheTerminatorGaming yeah, i do, but because i'm working on mod alone, i only use it to track my changelogs or ideas i want to explore. R2TR was dead for quite some time, practically after last official patch.. When i returned back to R2 modding earlier this year, i practically rebuilt the thing from scratch :) But i might open the discord for public in nearest future.
Ok sounds good :) keep up the good work! 👍
Idk why but I Wish TW Rome III, Medieval III and Empire II but with option like in Warhammer to connect all games as one game. 🤤
How about less focus on graphics and more focus on bigger battles i mean for petes sake other strategy games have noticed that having insane graphics just eats on the computers performance and wont allow you to have big battles that last for longer than 5min.
I've never really thought about a tactical retreat but it makes sense if it were implemented but come now we all know it won't be cause total war is like Ford, Ford used to make great vehicles but now they usually end up being shit in terms of reliability. What total war needs is competition of the genre it needs to be forced to innovate and maintain quality in order to have what we should have already had by now.
And thats where Manor Lords comes in! But yes you are totally right 💯
You realise this is already in every Total War game, right? If you've got the ability to retreat from a battle (ie not out of movement points or already having withdrawn once) every unit has a little flag button on the bottom right that you can click and they'll retreat towards the red line.
Yes but thats a button mate. I’m talking about an actual retreat mechanic where you have a specific zone of retreat, your army changes stance and gains buffs or penalties due to the order, etc. At the moment you can retreat anywhere, there’s no uniformity or organisation to it. I’m talking about battles that can go from fighting it out to, I have to get as many of my forces to THIS position to survive this.
@@TheTerminatorGaming what's the point of going from "you can retreat anywhere" to "you need to retreat in this tiny box"? The withdraw button works fine as a "tactical retreat" option, the reason it's never used is because an even moderately competent player will never get in a position where they should retreat and can. Either the battle will not be in their favour and they will withdraw on the strategic map or they won't be able to retreat at all and have to fight.
For me as I said in the video 1. Its more immersive because I dont really like running enemy units down all over the map and 2. Its just expanding on a mechanic thats barely used. Maybe the player wont use it much but the AI might, which could make things more interesting to play (if implemented correctly of course).
Also to reiterate, the way I see it it wouldnt be a “tiny little area” it would be one side of the battle map
Manor Lords be like
I appreciate how you never ignore the Warhammers and use them to give examples when talking about the Total War series in general. Some channels straight up ignore the fact that there IS Warhammer games and there ARE a SH*T ton of people playing them. It's okay if people don't play/like Warhammer games, even you don't play the Warhammer TWs much, maybe you never play them at all, but you mention them just like any other TW games you mention in your videos. That's the kind of "uniting" we need to have within the TW community. Unlike what the historical elitists and the warhammer weebs are doing
Appreciate it :) I personally love the Warhammer games and as you said it would be elitist to ignore their contribution to the franchise. Been thinking lately about how interesting it would be to see statistics on how many total war players play either historical or fantasy and the overlap.
For all we know there’s not much of a divide at all :)
they already have this
Shogun 2 already his this feature
the retreat it´s a great idea. sadly that would make them work so probably will never happend.
wouldn't a god mode be easier to make? you would not loose units and everybody would be happy? you know? I really love that "word I can't pronounce here" about historical and every damn campaign starts with let's take all the money the friendly factions is giving us , the most historical feature this game has.......
I have to say I respectfully disagree: An organised tactical retreat is widely regarded as the most difficult manoeuvre for any army throughout history to accomplish. Unless your army is entirely cavalry, the likelihood of it descending into a disordered route where the army is butchered piecemeal is very large. I have to say, of the many dreams I have for additional historical aspects to Total War games, this might rank bottom.
Fair enough, I mean I don’t think it should be something necessarily easy to pull off but I think it would be better than units running around all over the map.
Imagine a line of phalanx infantry holding up the enemy advance while walking backwards while the rest of the army behind them retreats to a specific square area. Once you’re comfortable everyone you want is in the zone you withdraw from the battle. It doesn’t mean you’re not going to take casualties, it just means you actually live to fight another day (sometimes) rather than getting obliterated 100% of the time when you lose.