Total War series I’m looking at you. Ever since they went to Rome Total War 2 and then worse in Warhammer, their units are so tiny you can never appreciate them properly unless you go into replay mode, or use the keyboard command to go first person on them, losing the ability to manage your armies. There really was no reason for this. 1.5x - 2x size with same spacing or use a larger map would have been perfect as mods kinda show. The first time one of those amazing monstrous sized creatures came out I was like., “dang that thing is dinky too!”
It seems a shame that so much effort goes into detailing them, then they use a scale that totally ruins tge immersion and you’re dealing with skittering ants instead.
There are several games that do this eaither due to poor camera design, or no chance to really see what’s going on with the amazing artwork. Curious to see your submissions and thoughts
I would think in strategy games generally there’s a tension between the bird’s-eye view necessary for gameplay and the ability to show off shiny artwork.
I will say that back in Rome: TW (the first one) I enjoyed zooming in on units, especially during the cavalry pursuit after a battle was essentially won, to get some of the graphical goodies I was normally too busy to enjoy.
I have no problem zooming in on my models in Warhammer 1 and 2 and enjoying the lovely work that went into them. I just don’t think playing the game that way is a good idea.
That’s always been the rub of the Total War series. It’s cool at the start to see the massive armies fighting close up, but to be effective your gonna have the camera pulled out allot of the time.
That is a gorgeous screenshot Scott. Nicely framed. You play at 1440p?
Battlefleet Gothic: Armada is another game that has this issue. Greatly detailed units that you can’t enjoy very well while playing, and worse - no replay camera.
Yeah, 1440p is my sweet spot in terms of visual fidelity and performance. 4K gaming on my PC I don’t think is really there yet, some things scale great but when they don’t (like the steam interface even) it’s micro text and I can’t read it, and I have decent eye sight. I tried playing 4K on my 49" TV from pretty close and while the game looked great (so does PS4 Pro content) so many small aspects didn’t work at all or very well, even with the DPI scale in Windows 10 set to 200%.
Though, I didn’t try big picture mode, which might have alleviated many of my Steam-specific issues, I suppose.
One thing I do love doing in Total War games is reviewing all my units as they are lined up before a battle. Especially if there is a new unit I haven’t seen before. In the new games especially, it’s great to see all the unique little idle animations CA have inserted as they stand there waiting to be thrown into the meat grinder.
I agree the Wargame series was bad for this - although at least it gave you a garage where you could zoom in and check out the details of your M1A1s. I’ve been playing the beta for AI War 2, and all the great detailed 3D work on the ships is pretty much useless as you have hundreds of ships that you simply must control zoomed right out so you can only see their 2D icon. Hearts of Iron IV also suffers from this as you have to zoom out to the theatre level to properly draw your arrows and manage the frontline.
If we moved beyond the single camera view to multiple windows, you could have some zoomed in on key units and battles and a main one with the usual view. You’d need a lot of pixels but it’s 2018. Pixels are plentiful.
There are also some nice camera mods for Warhammer.
I suggest (but I’ve not moved there quite yet myself) that a good camera mod and maybe a combat slow down mod might make things more interesting. I will be trying a few and I will report back.
TW:Warhammer2 has some fascinating graphics at its core as some units hit each other. The campaign map is the best CA has ever created graphically-speaking.
Yah, I had the same problem with the Graviteam games. I own some of the early ones, but was looking at the Mius Front and the Tunisia Campaign one and went to watch some Youtube videos of gameplay and the guy spent the whole game zoomed out clicking on little generic icons, you never really saw the unit models.
What’s funny is I am gameplay over graphics kind of guy for the most part. I grew up on Avalon Hill and SPI games and if NATO symbols were good enough for Charles Roberts they’re good enough for me. And what I thought watching that guy play all zoomed out was why not just make it a map game and spend the money they spent on graphics making the game itself better. But I guess it wouldn’t sell as well. And I did love the heck out of Combat Mission when it came out in great part because it wasn’t just virtual chits. But with Combat Mission it seems like I played zoomed in enough to see the units most of the time, and you had time to go look at stuff, and even rewind to watch the interesting little events happening down in the dirt.
In the Graviteam games I’d like to zoom in close to follow what’s going on, because the real meat of the game is down there where individual bullets and shells are flying around, but then I’d miss what’s going on with the rest of my units. I guess it goes back to the fundamental problem in real time games that the player can only focus on one place at a time.
In Star Wars: Empire at War there’s a feature I like. You hit the space bar and go into a “cinematic mode” where it jumps around to different units showing up close what they’re doing. It’s remarkably similar to watching an action scene in a Star Wars movie. But you have no control over what’s going on, so you can’t afford to go into that mode until you know you’re going to win the battle.
The transition from Homeworld to Homeworld 2 also made the ships feel smaller and plasticky, like toys. Part of that was the redesigned compass in Sensors Manager, and the fact that you can now tell for sure what the map bounds are, versus just guessing.
Ok I am beginning to think there is a way. The setup: Tomb Kings/Mortal Empires campaign/graphics pretty high (but large units as opposed to ultra).
2x scale units
Better Camera Mod
Steel Faith
Improved Battle Weather
AI General II: Spectator mode enhanced (I like this one better --there are two of these)
Played 35 turns and fought maybe 10-13 battles as Queen What’s her name. Snakey Staff lady.
I got to get in there and watch the combat quite a lot. Queeny is actually very cool to watch. Her snake special units are great. I just set the skellies to AI and run around murdering people with my snakes and her.
Very fun and very visual. Not super fast. Played on hard/hard (I still don’t trust the difficulty).
More experimentation. I want to see unit sizes go up/down and maybe play with the graphics a bit. Plus steel faith carries with it some strategic baggage.
(I cannot believe after all of these years playing historic total war and harder core wargames I am running around with snake cavalry and flying carrion birds…)
Which 2x scale unit mod? There’s a few out there. I’ve never used Steel Faith. The number of changes they’ve done seems like it might not be the game CA designed anymore, but maybe that’s a good thing. Definitely want to see your thoughts as you experiment more. This game should have felt like a Lord of the Rings epic movie battle out of the gate. Instead it was Maxis SimAnt with magic DLC hehe.
