Game changing idea: Battle size/Party size estimation

[Stratattack]

I just got this idea, that instead of seeing exact party sizes and garrison you will just see an indication instead, which will become more and more narrow as you level your scouting fx.

This could also apply for AI parties, so that they sometimes also will miscalculate if it is a good idea to siege this city or not.

I just feel like it would add way more realism, more importance to the scouting ability, more variety in combats etc. The estimate AI lords would get could also become more and more precise depending on how high their scouting level is

 

[Ananda_The_Destroyer]

to compilated ™

 

[Poddicus]

Not as if the AI would give a **** anyway
They'd either completely ignore each other as usual or divebomb an army

 

[Count_Morfetico]

to compilated ™

lol!

I think it's a great idea though. I have the impression scout didn't make as much a difference as in warband (i didn't do a proper test either, so i could be very wrong)

 

[MostBlunted]

I´ve seen this suggestion before in this forum, I like the idea.

But only if TW would be able to do this:

This could also apply for AI parties, so that they sometimes also will miscalculate if it is a good idea to siege this city or not.

Not only for sieges but also for battles. Like they "calculate" that your amy is like 100 troops strong and they want to engange. If they get close enough they see that your strenght is 180 troops or something like this.

 

[LuciusDomitiusAurelianus]

I just got this idea, that instead of seeing exact party sizes and garrison you will just see an indication instead, which will become more and more narrow as you level your scouting fx.

This could also apply for AI parties, so that they sometimes also will miscalculate if it is a good idea to siege this city or not.

I just feel like it would add way more realism, more importance to the scouting ability, more variety in combats etc. The estimate AI lords would get could also become more and more precise depending on how high their scouting level is

Yeah I would like this, even with high tier Scouting the arrows on the map for tracking Armies are pretty much non-existent. I would much rather it being a descriptive title (e.g., "Medium Party", "Extra Large Army", etc.) and then only when you are engaged can you see the full numbers.

Would be great if the AI did this too, could be a simple calc, their Scouting vs your Tactics and a RNG to determine if they think they can take you or not.

Unrelated to this, I find it helpful but also annoying I can get into an engagement and immediately know the number of position of every enemy formation. They should do away with this (I know, I can just not use it) and also extend these calculations into enemy behavior. So if they engaged your party of 180 with 90 dudes thinking you were some tiny force, they should just immediately charge you and get eaten the **** up.

 

[Ted Striker]

The AI would cheat.

At a certain range though you'd basically know the size of the enemy force, unless there are others hiding in ambush in the woods or something and that's not a feature of this game.

 

[Bannerman Man]

This idea is something mexxico addressed awhile back:

Hiding exact numbers of parties from player is discussed about 4-5 years ago. We tried something like ?-0..9 ??-10..99 ???-100..999 or something like this. For about 1 year development we go with that feature then it is removed. It created another problems I could not remember exactly what they were.

At least for example player started a siege after waiting outside 3-4 days and after building siege equipments and when he enters siege battle he sees there are much more garrison compared to he expected. At that point player will probably give up that siege and go another target. This is a time loss and it can be a repetative action not so fun to play that way however we are forcing player to play that way to be more succesfull. Its same on map, get closer to a party learn exact number and run away if you are 0.1 faster, player need to look tooltips compare speed all time. There can be some percentage of players want to play like this of course it can be optional but as a general game rule it does not suit well. There was another problems as I said which I can not remember and finally this feature is removed.

However in paper it seems a good idea but it does not suit well our M&B series. It can be used in another similar game design of course.

They explored the idea years ago, and apparently even implemented it for a period of time, before ultimately dropping it due to various issues.