New Unit Cohesion Mechanic for Total War: Medieval 3 (Idea)

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: battles, historical battles, Total War Medieval 3, morale
2. 5:00 – 10:00: battles, morale, unit cohesion, historical realism
3. 10:00 – 15:00: unit cohesion, battles, historical realism, Creative Assembly
4. 15:00 – 20:00: battles, morale, historical battles, Pharaoh
5. 20:00 – 25:00: battles
6. 25:00 – 30:00: morale, training ground mode, battles, Creative Assembly
7. 30:00 – 35:00: battles, unit cohesion, AI, Three Kingdoms

Notable quotes from "New Unit Cohesion Mechanic for Total War: Medieval 3 (Idea)"

• Hey everyone, we're here to talk about Total War Medieval 3's cohesion mechanic. Now, first thing to note is that this new mechanic is something that I am proposing. It is not official. So, it's an idea I've been mulling over in.

  about Total War Medieval 3 · at 0:00

• So, historical battles, at least in my eyes, have grown stagnant. a couple reasons for this. One is just going to be the inherent nature of historical battles. If you look at history, there.

  about battles · at 0:57

• Not represented in Total War. So, what this ends up being like is a common complaint that I see with the historical battles is that they're boring. You get a lot of blobbing…

  about historical battles · at 2:11

• I've identified is what we have here, which is essentially these battles we're dealing with morale. So morale is a bar.

  about morale · at 4:17

• Think we can get there with the state of video games. another reason why cohesion is important for historical reasons is that actually loss of cohesion was more common and more…

  about unit cohesion · at 8:01

• See that. This is important for gameplay, but it's also important for historical realism. This happened all the times in battles. It's why people march with, instruments…

  about historical realism · at 13:11

• The fact that you're pushing, it's not as satisfying as killing. then you introduce, it's tough for the AI, path finding, battle logic, balancing, maybe it's tough for the…

  about AI · at 33:16

• Be absolutely excellent. That would blow me away. It might even make it better than fantasy or 40k for me if they actually take historical to that next level. so anyways, that's been it.

  about fantasy settings · at 36:26

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

Companies & orgs

• Creative Assembly — Company · Referenced organization · 2 mentions · first at 10:14
  Developer of the Total War series, discussed in terms of their attempts to innovate historical battles.
  Make a difference. And so what it's boiled down to often if these battles are boring, usually what CA seems to have done is they kind of sweep the problem under the rug by…

Products & tech

• Total War Medieval 3 — Product · Core topic · 2 mentions · first at 0:01
  The focus of the discussion, with proposed mechanics to improve its gameplay.
• AI — Product · Referenced technology · 2 mentions · first at 3:15
  Discussed in terms of its role in controlling units and the challenges of implementing new mechanics.
• Warcore engine — Product · Referenced technology · 1 mention · first at 0:22
  Proposed as the new engine for Total War Medieval 3, potentially enabling new mechanics.
  Sorry. that's going to just take development time and I'm hoping the new war core engine does have some benefits here. and then visually intuitive I think will help it for players. The fact that this can be.
• Shogun — Product · Referenced product · 1 mention · first at 0:52
  Mentioned as the first Total War game, highlighting the speaker's long-term engagement with the series.
  I've been a longtime Total War player. This channel started as a Total War channel, played it for a long time, all the way since, first Shogun. So, what are we looking at here?

Concepts & topics

• unit cohesion — Concept · Core topic · 5 mentions · first at 6:30
  Proposed as a new mechanic to enhance historical realism and gameplay dynamics in Total War Medieval 3.
• battles — Concept · Core topic · 22 mentions · first at 0:14
  Discussed in the context of historical and fantasy settings, focusing on mechanics like cohesion.
• historical battles — Concept · Core topic · 5 mentions · first at 0:14
  Critiqued for their lack of variety and dynamism compared to fantasy settings in Total War games.
• historical realism — Concept · Core topic · 3 mentions · first at 7:24
  A key goal of the proposed cohesion mechanic, aiming to reflect true historical dynamics in gameplay.
• morale — Concept · Core topic · 10 mentions · first at 4:21
  Discussed as a binary system in Total War games that could be enhanced by the proposed cohesion mechanic.
• unit variety — Concept · Referenced topic · 3 mentions · first at 1:06
  Discussed as a limitation in historical battles compared to fantasy settings in Total War games.
  Victory. So, here obviously both it plays on the fact that you have different units that can engage in the air on the ground that are different sizes. There's weight, there's…
• fantasy settings — Concept · Referenced topic · 2 mentions · first at 1:15
  Compared to historical settings in Total War games, noted for their variety and dynamism.
• training ground mode — Concept · Proposed concept · 2 mentions · first at 25:26
  Suggested as a feature to help players understand and test unit cohesion mechanics.
  Basically takes this concept where you can see your unit and you can kind of see the cohesion. I think training ground mode takes that a level further and it throws that unit…
• inspection mode — Concept · Proposed concept · 1 mention · first at 26:28
  Proposed as a feature to allow players to closely interact with and inspect their units.
  Work similar. icing on the top of this would be not just training ground mode, but inspection mode. So, in the same way that back in Rome one you could tour your cities, it…
• unit stats — Concept · Referenced concept · 2 mentions · first at 2:50
  Discussed in the context of their complexity and role in Total War games.
  Things up for history to add that extra, dimension. So just looking over this unit stats, we've seen these grow increasingly complex and deep. three kingdoms had a ton of them.…
• environmental effects — Concept · Referenced concept · 1 mention · first at 2:57
  Mentioned as a feature in Total War games like Pharaoh, affecting unit behavior.
  Grow increasingly complex and deep. three kingdoms had a ton of them. Pharaoh, for instance, also introduced environmental effects. So, if a sandstorm came in or if there was…
• Roman manipole — Concept · Referenced concept · 1 mention · first at 6:41
  Used as an example to explain unit cohesion and historical battle formations.
  Obviously clear we're doing wargaming here. So we're modeling battles. Take for instance this Roman manipole. It's made up of a bunch of soldiers with centurions, officers, you…
• sword and bored — Concept · Referenced concept · 1 mention · first at 2:24
  Critiqued as a repetitive mechanic in historical Total War games, lacking innovation.
  Bland. And often it seems like with every new iteration of a historical title that's sword and bored, it's just a fresh coat of paint. The same mechanics of this blobbing…

Media & podcasts

• Three Kingdoms — Media · Referenced media · 4 mentions · first at 2:55
  Cited as a Total War game with complex unit stats and charge reflection mechanics.
  Bowling pins. and yeah, there is some recent precedent for this. we saw in Three Kingdoms that they had played a lot with charge reflection for braced units, things like that.…
• Pharaoh — Media · Referenced media · 3 mentions · first at 2:57
  Mentioned as an example of a Total War game that introduced environmental effects.
  Grow increasingly complex and deep. three kingdoms had a ton of them. Pharaoh, for instance, also introduced environmental effects. So, if a sandstorm came in or if there was…

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 Hey everyone, we're here to talk about Total War Medieval 3's cohesion mechanic. Now, first thing to note is that this new mechanic is something that I am proposing. It is not official. So, it's an idea I've been mulling over in my mind for quite a while now, and it's meant to address a lot of long-standing issues I've had with historical battles in Total War where they're just boring and they're being outstripped by the innovations and the flexibility of fantasy and sci-fi titles that Total War has been doing. So, with a new engine being proposed, the Warcore engine for Medieval 3 and Medival 3 being in an early pre-production, I thought that this was a fitting time to propose a new mechanic to toy with that I think can really bring the historical title up to par and perhaps even surpass the battles of fantasy and sci-fi. So, let's get into it. All right, so here is my board for the cohesion mechanic. We're going

0:43 to go ahead and get started with the intro. So, just to set the stage here, uh I've been a longtime Total War player. This channel started as a Total War channel, played it for a long time, all the way since, you know, first Shogun. So, what are we looking at here? Well, first, let's address the problem. So, historical battles, at least in my eyes, have grown stagnant. Uh, a couple reasons for this. One is just going to be the inherent nature of historical battles. If you look at history, there is a lower unit variety. It's all basically people, horses, maybe you have artillery, and that's kind of it. They all behave rather similarly. And then on the fantasy side, obviously you blow that wide open with the recent titles.

1:19 You have flying units, monstrous units, lords, magic, all sorts of stuff that happens. Uh so unit variety is stagnating when it comes to history. And when it comes to actual battle tactics, uh on the history side, it's also quite stagnant. Usually what it boils down to is hammer and anvil. You charge the front, you get locked in, and then someone tries to wrap around the flank. And that's kind of it over and over and over again for every title. Uh, compare that to fantasy settings and basically every army kind of has its own way to win. Uh, it's a Pandora's box of, you know, pick and choose your tool to gain victory. So, here obviously both it plays on the fact that you have different units that can engage in the air on the ground that are different sizes. There's weight, there's magic, there's all kinds of stuff that goes on that makes the battles here much more engaging. And I think history, you know,

2:08 just from someone who enjoys history, those battles are fascinating, but it's not represented in Total War. So, what this ends up being like is a common complaint that I see with the historical battles is that they're boring. You get a lot of blobbing and it can be quite bland. And often it seems like with every new iteration of a historical title that's sword and bored, it's just a fresh coat of paint. The same mechanics of this blobbing hammer and anvil style combat with just new skins over the top of it. So that's been kind of the issue as I've uh found it. Now obviously CIA knows as that this is an issue and they've tried to address it.

2:42 So I do want to give some credence to that. So here are some examples of past attempts that they've made to shake things up for history to add that extra, you know, dimension. So just looking over this unit stats, we've seen these grow increasingly complex and deep. Uh three kingdoms had a ton of them. Uh Pharaoh, for instance, also introduced environmental effects. So, if a sandstorm came in or if there was mud, it would have, you know, uh, pros and cons to how your unit behaved, influence your stats. Uh, for a long time, we've seen different formations that your units can adopt. Uh, in past autos, we've seen things like groups. You can lock your units into groups and then tell the AI to take control or move them as a group. Uh, there's different behavior modes. You know, how is your unit going to behave? Is it going to pursue foes? Is it going to be guarding itself? Uh, and then things like stances

3:26 in Pharaoh actually pushed it even further where here it was actually an ability that allowed you to actually push forces uh and push the enemy back or do you know give ground to allow you to do a controlled retreat. So these are all little things that CA has introduced to try and add that extra layer, but to me they really haven't shaken things up enough and they haven't been it been a comprehensive enough mechanic to really make a difference. And so what it's boiled down to often if these battles are boring, uh, usually what CA seems to have done is they kind of sweep the problem under the rug by making the battles shorter. That's been a trend we've seen in a lot of recent Tor battles. The battles, you know, back in the day, Rome one, medieval 2, could be really long, uh, both because of the scale of the map and the way combat played out versus now you're in and out in like 5 minutes. Uh, so I think you

4:14 know there's a lot of reasons why that could be, but I think a big problem that I've identified is what we have here, which is essentially these battles we're dealing with morale. So morale is a bar. So you can think of it as like kind of two mechanical states. Uh, either you are routing or not. So you can see here a bar for your morale. So, let's say here you start your battle. You're up here. You're confident. Uh-oh. You start to get concerned. You're maybe losing. Maybe your flanks are threatened. Then you're teetering on the edge. You're wavering. And then eventually you cross that line and now you're routing. But the problem with this is that all the while that you're, you know, up here just before you tip into routing, it's all mechanically the same. All you're telling the player during this long time that morale is deteriorating is you're like, "It's getting worse. It's getting worse. and it's about to go bad and then

5:02 something mechanically happens but it means that there's a lot of dead space here when it comes to you know good morale prior to routing where nothing is happening and that's where we've seen the time compression from CA in battles be that window gets compressed now what this means to me is I think you can actually better use this kind of dead uh air so to speak in battles by introducing something that does introduce a a mechanical change during this kind of in between process prior to routing that is intuitive, engaging, historical, and all that. And that's going to be my uh mechanic here. So, how to fix this? We can reveal it now.

5:37 Obviously, you could have anticipated it, but it's going to be a cohesion mechanic. So, essentially what this works is it would run parallel to your morale system. And essentially, what would happen here is instead of both units kind of being in the same state mechanically, what would happen here is as you deteriorate on the way heading to routing, you actually lose cohesion. So you start off in high cohesion, medium cohesion, low cohesion. So it's something that obviously here is visual, but there would be a whole host of backend um kind of mechanical implications of losing cohesion over time. But this is just my first um kind of inroad into proposing why I think this is a problem. Bland battles. again the morale being a kind of a binary system that causes a lot of dead air that ends up being compressed wasted time that I think we can reuse that time and actually make it a novel mechanic.

6:27 So that's it for my intro. Now let's get into what is uh unit cohesion. We can get into the definition. So for me unit cohesion is the degree to which individuals act as a unit. It's obviously clear we're doing wargaming here. So we're modeling battles. Take for instance this Roman manipole. It's made up of a bunch of soldiers with centurions, officers, you name it, all grouped up. And in any sort of simulation, obviously, we have to gamify this stuff. So in war games or total war or you name it, usually we grab that whole group, we put a box around it, and it gets a unit card and it behaves as a single kind of thing. So that's kind of to what extent do does the reality of the units being individual soldiers actually uh relate to us wanting to make it a single block? How are those two related? That's kind of unit cohesion.

7:19 So why might we be interested in uh unit cohesion? Well, there's historical reasons why. The first is it's better realism just to address this because armies are actually made up of individuals. They're not made up out of blocks. They're not made up out of robots, people who behave instantly with immediate reaction times and do everything. Armies are made up of uh individuals and you know they aren't necessarily mind linked to do what the leader does. Uh maintaining formation was very important for movement, attack, defense, morale, you name it. Cohesion is an integral integral part of battles historically. They just haven't been in war games because cohesion is something that's quite hard to model. Uh but I think we can get there with the state of video games. Uh another reason why cohesion is important for historical reasons is that actually loss of cohesion was more common and more determinative than loss of life. In

8:12 historical battles, casualties were actually quite low while the battle was taking place. You have troops fighting, battling with one another for hours, but really casualty percentages are, you know, on the order of one, maybe 5% on the high end. Historically, it's only when you route and break and get pursued and lose cohesion that you actually have all those losses versus Total War battles usually see you have 25% 50 75% losses uh during the actual fighting. So, I think shifting from that world into more cohesion loss rather than casualties is more historically accurate. And then finally, command and control was key to victory for battle.

8:50 Not just killing folks, but how well can you control your units? How well can you fight as an army? Uh, so that's why we care about cohesion from a historical standpoint. Now, why do we care about it for a gameplay standpoint? So, for me, I think it'll make more dynamic battles. There's more tactical combat where you have to think about what you do. Everything has implications. It's a new mechanics to engage with that makes for more tactical combat, you know, rock, paper, scissors, thinking like chess, stuff like that, instead of just smashing units together. Um, more unit variety. It's again another variable that you can incorporate into different units. Imagine a peasant unit that has low cohesion versus a knight that has high cohesion or two peasants, one that has been drilled that has high cohesion.

9:28 There's different ways to actually now differentiate units also between different time periods. If we're spanning in medieval 3, the early to late medieval period, we start to introduce professional forces. Those are going to have high cohesion versus early period which might have low cohesion. Uh there's more opportunities for unit customization, which I'll get into later, but this could be picking and choosing your leaders. It could be things like having musicians or officers to increase the cohesion within a unit.

9:51 Uh, and then having this new cohesion mechanic allows you to enrich other existing mechanics. It can interact with morale. It can interact with um different abilities, things like that. It's also the foundation for new mechanics. But the thing to me that's most important actually is that this cohesion um mechanic that I'm uh suggesting is visually intuitive. So rather than all the other stuff we've seen that uh Creative Assembly was playing with. So if we look at a lot of the stuff here, most of them are really about kind of changing stats on a unit or stuff that is like numbers, figures that's under the hood. But with cohesion, it's something that is visually intuitive. So if we go back and we look at my idea for the cohesion here, I don't have to look at a menu and see that, oh, I've dropped 5 percentage points. It's visual. You can see it here on how cohesive your unit is. So that to

10:44 me is um it's just smart game design that a mechanic is visually intuitive and it just kind of makes sense with what cohesion is. Your unit that used to be nice and square is now cast into a blob. So the final thing to say on definitions here is uh there is going to be some replplumbing that has to be done for units. Uh so whereas before units were kind of these big blobs where the leader and the other officers were kind of just one of many, they're now actually going to have to play a role. So what we have to do with this rework system is uh there has to be a unit leader for units.

11:19 Uh and they're going to be the control point of the unit. Uh and then the other followers in that unit are going to be essentially magnetized to that leader. So wherever that leader want to go wants to go, the others will follow. So I'll show you kind of what this looks like here. So for instance, let's say that I have my unit here. Here is my leader. Uh the game system on the back end is going to have to know, okay, this is where my unit is. This is its center of gravity. That leader is pointing in this direction. So that's the arrow. And it has a frontage of where it wants its formation to be. Now that is kind of the perfect world of how this unit thinks it should behave. And depending on where you are in the cohesion spectrum, if you're high cohesion, then yes, the rest of the unit will, you know, follow that.

12:04 But low cohesion means you won't stick to that as well. And I think there should be a way to have some sort of like cohesion aura radiating out from the leader, which is essentially how close you are to leader means you're going to be more likely to stick to the plan versus the further away you are, the less likely you are to um to actually follow orders. And that just makes sense from a realism standpoint. You can't hear the leader. you can't see what they're doing. The further are you away, the less cohesive you are from the unit. So that's kind of the definition side of things. Now, let's go ahead and talk about cohesion in practice. So the first thing is going to be unit movement. So this is how I see cohesion playing out when you try and tell a unit to move. So when you tell it to move, your unit leader is going to be the first one to step off. He's deciding that this unit is going to move. The

12:48 rest of the units are going to follow. And here you can see that the ones in the back, the ones that are further away that have lower cohesion are going to be the last to be issued this command. So it's like a staggered uh movement. Then what happens is that the more you walk, the more cohesion deteriorates to the point that if you march for a very long time and especially if you run, I think naturally your cohesion should drop a certain amount. And visually you should see that. This is important for gameplay, but it's also important for historical realism. This happened all the times in battles. It's why people march with, you know, instruments playing to maintain cohesion. It's why people stopped to redress their lines.

13:25 It's because marching actually did have a cost of unit cohesion. And then I'm showing that here once your unit reaches where it's supposed to be, the rest of the soldiers will catch up and then they can redress their lines. So, um, just some final notes on cohesion and movement. I think this will impose a cost on movement. Um, if you lose cohesion while you walk, it means that you're vulnerable to attacks. It means you need time to both step off and then also reform before and after a walk. Uh and it also introduced a place for actually banners, officers, musicians, and the like to actually improve the behavior of your cohesion whilst on the march. It's a new mechanic that you can now layer on top of cohesion. And again, finally, it's a visual display of a unit's cohesion. So, this to me is going to be really really important because you can imagine uh let's say that you have two units of knights that while at

14:15 rest they look the same. They start to approach each other. One of those groups of knights has lower cohesion. They're not as disciplined for whatever reason. They might have a bad leader. They're going to start to be raggedy versus the other unit of knights well disciplined, crack, have a great leader. They are just perfect box formation. This is something we haven't seen in past war games. As units are coming close together, you usually have to just know off of memory or hover over that unit to get its stats, compare it to yours, and see which one is better. But in this case, you can see just by the way they walk which one is going to come out on top or which one will have a a potential edge. So that to me is kind of starting to unravel why I think cohesion is important and why it's visually intuitive.

14:58 Uh next we get into actual combat. So, let's say two units units are going to smash into one another. I think that there needs to be an interplay between cohesion and some sort of weight mechanic where uh the better cohesion you have plus maybe some other stats means that you might just be a heavier unit which means that you can then push against other forces. So, we've seen this in early Total War games, the ability to push. Pharaoh actually brought it back. But I think what this means is that the cohesion mechanic should play quite well with the idea that battles are going to be kind of pushes back and forth. Uh and so this will be quite interesting. So a high cohesion force of knights versus another group of knights or a group of peasants will easily be able to push them back if they have lower cohesion to the point that if you get low enough cohesion in this case now they might start to waver

15:46 and eventually route. But as we said before, something is actually happening during this fight prior to it routing. Uh, so some more talking points on this. Again, this is probably going to have to play with some sort of system of unit weights. How cohesion and weights play together. I think it'll be a a combination of other variables, but they should be somewhat proportional. Uh, and then you can have things like this, which is, you know, the more cohesion, the more you push, you're going to have an impact on morale. So let's say you are actually pushing another unit forward, you could have, you know, plus five morale, gaining ground, or if you're on the other side, minus five morale, losing ground. So I think that's important. Uh, another thing to note is that uh cohesion could have an effect on what happens when you do finally tip over into routing. So let's say that you have high cohesion. If you're forced to

16:36 break, you might route. But if you still have that high cohesion, maybe you're not going to route for that long. Maybe it's five seconds, maybe it's 10 seconds. Versus if you have a little bit lower, maybe say medium cohesion, you're going to route. You're going to route maybe a lot longer and then maybe you can rally. Versus if you're at low cohesion already and then you route, then probably odds are you're not going to get back together. You already had low cohesion and so it's more likely that you're going to shatter permanently rather than route and rally. So this is another way to I think interplay this cohesion mechanic and its kind of parallel system of morale.

17:12 Uh and then finally cavalry combat I think will be relevant as well. So cohesion is key for unit bracing. So let's say a cavalry group with high cohesion charges against infantry with high cohesion. Boom. It tries to smash into it. You can see here that it somewhat, you know, takes a chunk out of the receiving end of the other unit's cohesion, but really doesn't end up doing that much versus if you were to charge a low cohesion unit, you're going to cut through that thing like a hot knife through butter. Uh, this is something that just happened historically. Cavalry charging, you know, braced ranks of infantry just didn't happen outside of just super super heavy shot cavalry. um you had to wait until an enemy force lost cohesion, perhaps because of missile attacks or just a degradation through marching or other factors before you could cut through it. And then if you did attack it, boom, you can just bowl that thing

18:00 over like a bowling ball through uh bowling pins. Um and yeah, there is some recent precedent for this. You know, we saw in Three Kingdoms that they had played a lot with charge reflection uh for braced units, things like that. I thought it behaved very well. So there is precedent for this and I think it could just be wrapped up into this overall cohesion mechanic. Uh last thing to say about types of you know battles and engagements in cohesion is I think this pushpull with cohesion will play well with sieges. Often we've seen sieges in historical battles get bogged down at choke points. But with this cohesion kind of push mechanic you might actually be able to push through choke points instead of the battle stagnating at the gates. you might actually be have, you know, a good cohesion force can push through the enemy and actually delogg a lot of these areas or push back through streets, things like that. So, I

18:49 think it'll help a lot for sieges. So, that's cohesion in practice. Uh, next we're going to be looking at cohesion from both the micro level and the macro level. So, cohesion on the micro level to me is well, what's going on with cohesion within a unit? So, as we said before, the idea is you have a unit leader, you have a unit direction, and a unit front. And then within that you have maybe some sort of aura or some sort of way that relates the unit leader to the rest of the soldiers. How well are they connected? To what degree are they um acting as a unit? So I think in order to conceptualize all that, I think we need a unit um menu in order to look, you know, under the hood of your unit.

19:30 So I've gone ahead and I've mocked this up with a couple different tabs. So the first tab I think we need is, you know, something like this. You know, you click on a unit. Okay, in this case you would have the name of the unit that might be something bespoke, the Knights of Tulus, and they're a heavy sword infantry. And on the top right, you might have a drop down that gives you, you know, your typical Total War stats. But then what I think you can do is you have these different tabs that you can go over to inspect what's going on with your unit.

19:55 So for me, what I think makes sense is, you know, what people do you have in that unit? What gear do they have? What heraldry are they wearing? And then, you know, what's the end formation? So when it comes to people, this is what I think you should have. So the unit leader that you saw up here, the one that's leading your actual unit that's anchoring this force and mechanically everyone's kind of tethered to, that's an important character. So I think you should be able to know who is that leader. Now, in some cases, you know, let's say it's a general's bodyguard. Well, that's going to be your general. It's going to be someone on the campaign map that you're familiar with that has stats, you know, and improvements and can be a king or whatever. But I don't think that's always going to be the case. I think every single unit regardless of whether or not it's a faction leader or an heir or a prince or something. I think you

20:37 should always have a leader with some facts about them. Uh because that'll have, you know, they should be able to get ranks and level up. You know, back in the day, you we used to have man of the hour. Someone was promoted to a general from the rank. So, I think that would be your leader. They would get a name, a portrait, some stats about them, some basic things about how good of a leader they are. Maybe it could give buffs to your unit. The other thing is I think we need well how do we fit out the other people in your in your unit? So I think there is room for a support staff that what I'm thinking here would be support staff would include you know officers, musicians and bannermanmen. Historically most armies have those. Uh and I think what would happen is that there would be a certain amount of slots that are available for a given unit that could be unlocked over time either because the

21:23 size of the unit or maybe it's the level of development of that unit. A peasant isn't going to have a lot of slots for officers versus a knight's retinue can have lots of officer slots. And I think you should have the ability to choose who goes into each of these slots. They should again be clickable on have their own traits, personalities, things like that. Um so that they all make sense. And let's say you assign them to this slot, that character should now show up in your unit and show up in the battle. Uh further down the line, soldiers. I don't think you need to be able to click on every individual soldier, but there should still be some sort of basic roster that shows you how many soldiers there are. And maybe using this menu, you might actually have an ability to track uh you know, wounds or deaths on soldiers after battles, how long are they going to recover. Already we have a recovery and attrition mechanic in total

22:12 war and pastel war titles. This could be a home for it. You could see how uh wounded a unit is prior to the battle, and you could try and conileles that unit. Maybe one of your officers up here is a medic and post battle he could see to heal up the wounded within a particular unit as opposed to it being for your whole army. So that to me is a really interesting way of how the people in your unit could work. And again, um depending on which people you choose, I think it would have an influence on your cohesion. Again, your overall leader, their command aura, their cohesion aura plays and effects. Same thing with having musicians or bannermanmen. That would boost your ability to stay cohesive. That's again the reason why you play music in battle and you wave around flags.

22:53 Uh other things that I think you should do when you're inspecting your unit on a micro level is the gear menu. So in this case, maybe there is some way to customize the primary and secondary weapon of your unit. Maybe you can upgrade them over time and see what is generally equipped to your soldiers. Uh and again, that would interplay with kind of the stats of said unit. Uh, another menu here that I think will be vital that isn't really necessary for cohesion, but while we're at it, we might as well include this heraldry. Uh, if I'm looking at my unit up close and I'm customizing my leaders, I should really be able to customize how they look, change the banners, change the shields, do all sorts of design stuff that we've seen in games like Manorlords.

23:32 And lastly, perhaps the most important one that I think you need to be able to click on is this last tab, which is formation. The purpose of this is see my unit. and what does it look like when they're put together in a formation? And so what I think this should be is rather than this kind of up close frontal shot, it should be some sort of isometric top- down view that says, "Okay, here's my unit. What does it actually look like in the field?" And so you can see um you know, wounded guys maybe are sitting off in the back. They're on the bench. Uh here's all my active guys that are going to be in battle. If I've equipped a bannerman, I can see him in the middle.

24:05 I can see my officer in the front. I can see all that. Um there should also be a simplified way to see that. So I for instance have a diagram here that shows the positions of your soldiers. The red might be your officers. Okay, I have my unit leader in the front. I have an officer in the back who might extend that sort of cohesion aura to the back to make sure that my guys in the back can actually follow orders. Uh and then I can see where my musicians are. I can see where my uh bannermen are. And maybe even I can choose where they're naturally going to be in my formation.

24:36 That could all be interesting. Uh lastly, maybe there are other formations that you can toggle that both you can do in the battle. And then here you should be able to toggle them to see just how does my formation look. Am I in square? Am I in wedge? Am I in diamond? Am I in marching column? Things like that. Um and depending on what you click on, there should be a quick calculation that tells you the results of well, okay, I've customized my unit. How cohesive are they at this point? So I can see here, oh, it's pretty good cohesion. Let me go back to the people. Let me now add a third officer. Let me go back to cohesion. And maybe now that cohesion is now all the way to full. So this is how I think at a micro level it all gets rolled in together. Um I think there's some stuff that creative assembly could do to further push this idea. Uh one of them is going to be what I'm calling like a training ground mode. So it

25:28 basically takes this concept where you can see your unit and you can kind of see the cohesion. I think training ground mode takes that a level further and it throws that unit um into some kind of pre-ordained action. So, hit training mode and maybe you can say march. You get a visual simulation that takes your unit as it's been built and it just marches it continuously. The camera tracks it and essentially what that would say is okay, if I'm in battle and my guys are marching, how does the engine simulate them marching? And so, you can see, oh wow, there I can see my musicians playing. I can see that we're moving really tightly. or if you simulate peasants marching, uh it's going to be really loose and you can say, "Wow, we have a problem here." Uh I see this functioning very similar to what Warhammer Total War II has been doing, um where you have kind of this spell um tool that allows you to kind of

26:18 preview how spells work in this little kind of in window. So I I expect this to work similar. Uh icing on the top of this would be uh not just training ground mode, but inspection mode. So, in the same way that back in Rome one you could tour your cities, it would be great if you could tour your unit. So, not just, you know, stand in front of it here and customize it, but actually take the reigns of the general and go in first person perspective or third person perspective and interact with your troops, see your troops. I think that would be great in terms of kind of tying all this customization together and really make you, you know, buy into the idea that this is a unit made up of individuals because I can literally see each individual here. I can see them in first person. Um, and that for realism, for investment is great. So, that's cohesion on a micro level. Then you have cohesion on a macro level. So, for me,

27:13 the fact that you have cohesion uh is great for more dynamic engagements. So, in the old system, you kind of get this big blob along the battle line where people fight and it's to the death or until you shatter. In the new system, it starts to be a bit more dynamic. The battlefield will morph. It'll eb and flow depending on the cohesions of different units as they interact. Uh, it also opens the door for different things. So, um, whereas in the past there have been abilities, they to me have always seemed kind of like magic.

27:42 you click a button and you get plus five morale or you get plus 10 attack. Uh with this cohesion mechanic, I think you can make your abilities more grounded. So let's say for instance you wanted to buff the attack of your unit. You have the sound the charge ability. You click that and all of a sudden the fact that you have a musician here means that they can actually blow their horn. That musician triggers an audio cue and now you get a stat boost that's based off something that's actually grounded. Same thing here. Let's say you have a bannerman and you say, "Hold the line."

28:15 Your bannerman might do something like this, wave the flag, and all of a sudden you get a, you know, a cohesion modifier to your force that was otherwise maybe losing cohesion, losing ground. Maybe it gets, you know, it stands firm and it gets a big cohesion boost for like 10 seconds, 20 seconds that like stalls the advance of the enemy for a little bit of time. Uh, and lastly, you know, in the past, we've kind of moved around our generals to maybe rally troops when it came to morale. I think moving around generals can also do uh cohesion benefits. If I move my general over here, not only are my troops better at morale, but now their cohesion may be shored up and you can actually then help push the enemy force back. So yeah, I think it just makes overall for more uh intuitive battles, more dynamic battles.

28:59 There's all sorts of other stuff about like, okay, if I'm moving my force around to do a flank, but I'm going to lose cohesion in the process. Can a cavalry force come hit me in the side because I'm now more vulnerable as I move? Maybe I'm going to choose to move my knights, uh, my foot knights who have good cohesion. It might take them longer, but they're going to stay in tight cohesion along the way and be braced against cavalry charge the whole way through. Might take them longer, but they're going to get there inevitably.

29:23 So, all sorts of stuff like this starts to play in, and it's it's I don't know, to me, it's more rewarding combat. Uh what you can also do is you can apply cohesion to larger formation. So uh in the medieval era and other eras uh you have this idea of like banner systems which is essentially you have a small unit that rallies around a banner. Multiple banners then come together around a central banner and you kind of build these units together into larger and larger forces. You could do the same and apply a kind of macrolevel or higher level cohesion mechanic and it would kind of be similar to the way uh three kingdoms uh introduce different generals with their own units here that kind of all fight together. I think this would be similar, but you take it a level further where not only do these units kind of all have their own individual co cohesion and then maybe grouped together, there's a kind of a sum of the

30:11 parts overall cohesion, but I think you can take it further and start to build on me mechanics. So, not just are these units together in a banner, but you could say, "Okay, you're in a banner. I want this banner to adopt said formation." Maybe it's preset. Maybe it's a custom one like this one here where you lock your formation. Once you lock it, you have a kind of cohesion. How well are the individual units adhering to this overall battle plan, this overall formation? And what you could do at that point is you could implement something like the um harmony system for three kingdoms for um cath where let's say that you now have a larger banner that's cohesive. Now I think you should get some benefits like in harmony you can see here you know uh effect intensity increases by the highest nearby harmony multiplier on a unit more speed more reload skill more leadership so what I'm saying here is

31:07 cohesion could be the determinant for how much extra benefits a unit gets for being in formation not just within a unit but but within a larger formation and that to me will make the battles up here much more interesting because no longer is it just about individual one-on-one fights But maybe your peasants will actually function better if you make a big peasant box rather than a big stringy line. Big peasant box. And they just all function better as a big box because they have better cohesion. They all are in safety. They benefit from this harmony mechanic. And now if a knight group tries to attack them, they're buffed uh and they fight stronger in this formation. And it adds an additional element which is like, okay, I have a big formation. Is it good for me to try and break off one of these units to try and do a flank around the knight that's attacking me or do I stay in formation and fight in this big

32:00 formation? So, it's an additional variable that I think to me will make these battles much more interesting uh and intuitive and add an additional tactical layer here. Uh so, yeah, that's my presentation on cohesion. Uh I am not without reservations on this. Uh I have some potential problems that I wanted to flag. Uh the first is that it's going to be hard to implement. So this is a new system that I'm proposing. Uh in theory it's very interconnected and it poses some questions on well you know if there's this weight system it makes sense with two units pushing but what if you have three v1 or multiple units interacting that could be very tough. Um there's also the idea of you know how does leadership fatigue health command all interact with cohesion and how you know what is the output of cohesion onto these other variables. It could get very messy very quick. Uh there's also the threat of a loss of player agency where

32:53 let's say you have a low cohesion unit and it just doesn't want to act as a unit. Um it's an unresponsive unit. Uh you might get penalized for moving you lose cohesion. That could all be something that's frustrating to a player. Anytime you take away player agency in a video game, people generally don't like that. So that's that could be an issue. Uh then you have battles could still be slow. You know, maybe this doesn't solve the grindy issue. Maybe the fact that you're pushing, uh, it's not as satisfying as killing. Um, then you introduce, you know, it's tough for the AI, path finding, battle logic, balancing, maybe it's tough for the player. Um, it's a new mechanic. Is this even what players want? I think it's what I want, but not necessarily the general market. So, those are my potential problems. I have thought up of some solutions, and I'll present them to you, but I'd eager I'd be eager to hear

33:40 what you think. So, hard to implement. I mean, there's no real way around that besides just sinking in more development time to solve it. Uh, you could potentially simplify cohesion. I think you could just maybe apply it to some units. Say maybe peasants are the only ones that suffer from cohesion. Or maybe there's a specific trait like um, you know, expendable that we've seen for like scavenl slaves where if a unit is a peasant, slap it with the the unruly trait or the low cohesion trait and all of a sudden this mechanic is turned on.

34:09 But for everyone else, h just ignore cohesion. you know, you can scale it back like that. Um, loss of player agency. I think that there should be a minimum cohesion floor, which is to say no matter how low you go in cohesion, uh, a certain number of units within uh, soldiers within that unit should always respond. So maybe you have a floor of like 10% of the unit always responds immediately to whatever you're doing. Um, and then I think there should be ways to improve unit cohesion that are pretty readily available. upgrading your unit, applying officers, applying bannermanmen, things like that.

34:45 Uh, and then finally, you know, if battles are slow, I think that will be, yes, it might be true, but just because it's slow doesn't mean it's not fun. I think as long as you make the riskreward very present and you make it a rock paper scissors in terms of your choices and engagements, I think it could be a lot more fun. Um, but you have to find the right balance. Uh, tough for the AI. I mean, sorry. uh that's going to just take development time and I'm hoping the the new war core engine does have some benefits here. Uh and then visually intuitive uh I think will help it for players. The fact that this can be grasped, it's not behind some spreadsheets, it's not behind some numbers or percentage, the fact that it's visually intuitive and it kind of makes sense. The mechanic and the visual presentation are kind of linked together. I think that's good. Uh, and then I think it can be resolved with

35:31 better UI and new tools like that training field so people can become familiar with how cohesion works and test it. Um, so yeah, that is my presentation. I think where we're at is a lot of these elements that I've presented here have been found in bits and pieces in recent Total War titles. U, now CA just has to throw it into the soup, get to cooking. They're an early development stage, so I hope they can iterate on some of these ideas. But I think to really drive this point home, uh it's going to take a lot of buy off from you guys in the community. So, uh definitely let me know how what do you think about this cohesion um mechanic.

36:08 Are there ways that you think you can improve it? Are there problems that you foresee that I didn't foresee? Are there solutions that you foresee? Are there things that you're excited for? you know, this is a time to engage with CA, engage with me and others, uh, and see if we can't change Total War because for me, you know, something like this would be absolutely excellent. That would blow me away. It might even make it better than fantasy or 40k for me if they actually take historical to that next level. Uh, so anyways, that's been it.

36:36 Hope you guys enjoyed. Stay tuned for more and I'll see you in the next

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in "New Unit Cohesion Mechanic for Total War: Medieval 3 (Idea)"?

In order: 0:00 battles, historical battles, Total War Medieval 3, morale; 5:00 battles, morale, unit cohesion, historical realism; 10:00 unit cohesion, battles, historical realism, Creative Assembly; 15:00 battles, morale, historical battles, Pharaoh; 20:00 battles; 25:00 morale, training ground mode, battles, Creative Assembly; 30:00 battles, unit cohesion, AI, Three Kingdoms.

What is mentioned in this Invicta episode?

20 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including unit cohesion, Total War Medieval 3, battles, historical battles, historical realism, morale. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "New Unit Cohesion Mechanic for Total War: Medieval 3 (Idea)"?

The episode runs 37 min; the transcript is about 7,733 words in 53 timestamped sections.

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