Slower battles Anyone? and other stuff

After a awhile of playing EB, i got used to the slower paced battles in which one couldn't use archers to mow down the enemy in under 5 minutes, fights lasted longer than a couple of seconds, and one had time to react to the enemy's attacks. Now i've decided to try RS, and boy, did I get a shock.

When i played a few battles i noticed instantly that men were dieing left and right, getting mowed down impossibly fast (in seconds), and that was just infantry vs infantry. Don't get me started on the calvary. :dizzy2::skull:

I understand completely, though, the amount of work involved here. I was Just going through the units alone trying to rebalance them and slow down their relentless massacres, which is a big project in itself. And while this post seems critical, i would also say i also like other insights and ideas i didn't see elsewhere, such as having population growing buildings, a treasury you can sack, and a more dangerous independent/slave faction (BIG PLUS). Even better is that this is a stable, scriptless :yes: (DOUBLE BIG PLUS) mod.

However i would suggest the following for the up and coming RS 2.0:

*Have a slow battle option for slow people like me :beam:
*Slow down the cash flow for the player, and make him struggle to build an economy and maintain an army (at least for the harder difficulties)
*Make the population growth fairly slow and have population be treated like an important commodity (and not a simple side note) at any city level, and reduce slightly the Population Growth buildings build time
*Jack up the prices for soldiers (WAY UP, its too easy, at least at the beginning)

In a round about way of saying it, i would like to have a mod that will try to KILL ME, EAT ME AND SPIT OUT THE BONES. :laugh4:

Admittedly i haven't played this very long, and my opinions could change as I progress, but for now, I think i'm not being altogther unreasonable.


PS: about possible unit rebalance for slow battles for 1.5, i'm working on a possibility for that now and hope to try it out in the next few days. If it works, i'll consider uploading it and maybe polishing it some. But i was hoping the people who know this mod best (ie the guys who made it) could make it even better.

Well Cheers and thanks for listening and opinions

gamerdude

I'll just make a couple of comments and ask a couple of questions. First the comments, a slow battle option just isn't feasible, we already have 0-turn and 1-turn options, and making a slow battle option would mean making slow versions of both 0-turn and 1-turn. If you want to slow the game down, switch to using the 1-turn recruitment scheme. Jacking the prices of soldiers way up doesn't work, because it severly effects the AIs ability to manage its resources and empire.

On the money front, the game is designed so that while your empire is within its "home" region the economy does well, but the further you expand outside of your "home" region the slower your economy gets. Taking Rome as an example, as long as your empire is limited to the peninsula (and the peloponese) your economy will do well, but as start expanding into gaul, spain, central europe, and africa, mid-east to a lesser degree your economy will start slowing down, and money starts to become very tight, and if you try to expand into the steeps your economy pays a heavy price.

To make the game more of a challenge, do not attack anybody for the first 20 years or so as this gives the AI a chance to build up.

Now for the questions:

1) What difficulty are you playing on? RS is designed to play on H/H or H/VH, and an oddity of how we've designed the economy is that if you play on VH campaign your economy is actually easier to manage and makes you more money than if you play on H campaign

2) Are you blitzing? As I mentioned above to increase the difficulty let the AI build up for 20 years or so before trying to expand.

I had a third question, but my mind went to mush and I can't remember it but maybe later :D

EDIT: I forgot to mention, the reason battles are so much faster is we made a design decision, that we didn't want battles lasting hours, but wanted them to be quicker. That being said, many on the team aren't happy with the balance in RS1.5 and we're hoping we'll get it even better when RS2 is released.

Ah, it hadn't occurred to me that you would have to do some of that extra stuff to get my ideas to work, and i haven't progressed far enough to get into the whole slow money scheme you were talking about, and yes, i'm playin on H/VH.

About the blitzing, I did take that into account some, and i didn't say was altogether unhappy about The strategy map style in particular. Sorry if i was totally unclear, but i was trying more to get at that the battles being too fast more than anything else. ANd yes i was blitzing, more or less to try to get a good feel with kind of units i was working with and the battle style, not so much the AI's abilities or resilience.

BTW I was kind of on a roll when wrote that post, so i threw in some other more campaign oriented ideas without really having a whole ton of experience behind it. that was kinda dumb, i admit it. MEA CULPA. This is your mod, I shouldn't be telling you how to make it anyways... but still i think there are things that could use some changes or improvment. Like i said though, as i get farther into the mod, my opinions will change some too, but for now im just giving you my general first impressions.

Unit stats are being completely redone for RS2 - basically there are pretty much none of the original RS1.5 units left behind. Everything is new and we have (in my opinion) the king of stats redoing the battle system for RS2. Battles will definitely be slower and we hope a lot more of a challenge. Work has just started on this balancing aspect.

On the money front, the game is designed so that while your empire is within its "home" region the economy does well, but the further you expand outside of your "home" region the slower your economy gets. Taking Rome as an example, as long as your empire is limited to the peninsula (and the peloponese) your economy will do well, but as start expanding into gaul, spain, central europe, and africa, mid-east to a lesser degree your economy will start slowing down, and money starts to become very tight, and if you try to expand into the steeps your economy pays a heavy price.

To make the game more of a challenge, do not attack anybody for the first 20 years or so as this gives the AI a chance to build up.