Snowball effect and EBII

[Mister V]

I think that the EB team should just figure out a way to make it so that newly conquered towns don't pay for themselves. You have to sink a lot of money into them to make them functional and even more to make it make money for you just like in real life. That way there's no way you can just continue to expand. You have to expand, consolidate, expand, and consolidate... much like the Civ 4 model in fact rather than balloon at a ridiculous rate through exponential growth like in TW.

Huh? I have to spend several years in some cities to make the populace content enough for me to continue the campaign (Saba is proving to be such a challenge). I don't think constant expansion is very rational in EB (personally I'm not comfortable with it). I can't imagine constantly expanding unless I throw caution to the winds and continue hammering the enemy with whatever units I get. I've conquered Gerrha as the AS about 7 years ago and I'm still sitting there (partly because I don't have a replacement governor, but still). How much more difficult can that get? (and I haven't been to the indian cities yet)
Besides, the AI in my current campaign seems to be pretty balanced, - 1.2 must've brought in some magic to keep the AI on its toes.

EDIT: now that I think about it, what I've said may not apply to the M2TW AI, but afaik they've made it more flexible for modders, and the EB team has a mountain of experience behind them, so...

[seienchin]

I think its rather unrealistic, that small villages still can overthrow big occupation forces just because they are too far from the capital and stuff like that
Alexander wouldnt have conquered the world in EB

[Mediolanicus]

So you are basically saying that it is much harder to conquer the known world in EB than in real life?

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

Alexander was so successfuly because he only had his empire for a couple years. It is doubtful that he could have held it together with charisma and miltary strength alone. He was just "fortunate" enough to die before all the people he conquered started rebelling.

Alexander's empire essentially became the Seleukid Empire. It continuously had problems with distant populations rebelling.

[A Terribly Harmful Name]

If we could really compare Alexander to EB, then Makedonia would rush the whole Achaemenid Empire in 8-10 years, win a couple of heroic victories and siege assaults, then disintegrate itself into several different emerging factions or just rebels, given the limitations of the engine. Nothing really impossible with some tweaks, clearly.

[seienchin]

If we could really compare Alexander to EB, then Makedonia would rush the whole Achaemenid Empire in 8-10 years, win a couple of heroic victories and siege assaults, then disintegrate itself into several different emerging factions or just rebels, given the limitations of the engine. Nothing really impossible with some tweaks, clearly.

Completly impossible.
The thing is in Rome, that big towns far from your capital are only controllable, when conquered and exterminated by good generals.
And in EB Alexander would get the weary, confined to bed,getting older and halfway dead threads and wouldnt move more than like 2cm every season and in the winter 0. Not to mention the starving he would have marching through foreign lands all the time.
I hope the team doesnt make the Conquering any slower to progress. Okay with factions like Karthago or the Romanoi its easy to expand fast but with factions like bactria or makedonia you get old before reaching your Campain goal or try to conquer an empire.

[A Terribly Harmful Name]

Alexander never did it all alone. He had a couple of generals under his command so we could assume that they would share the exhaustive conquering and prevent the cities from rebelling.

[seienchin]

ALexanders army was small compared to the size of the persian empire. He relied that his fame and victories kept the local populations from rebelling.

[Aulus Caecina Severus]

is that because of the regional recruitment rule
if it is, then
its far more realistic , but ,
shipping your elite units to your capital region like from iberia to italia is more than 7 turns to ship them then retrain them and get them back into line

I think we should increase the cost of maintaining the unit, simultaneously increasing the fallen recovered (only for winners) almost to the point of having the same army as before. This will lead armies of elite away from the place where you retrain.

I hate small armies because it is very boring fight 2-3 units (it is a waste of time). Fighting with a large army against other large armies is more challenging (and realistic).

Decrease the number of armies around, but big.

The rebels that are formed from nothing just give discomfort because you forced to chase and fight, perhaps only 2 units.
I am not saying to remove them, but to adjust them so that they form large rebel armies, a few times.

Thus, every victory will really make sense and the consequences of it will be more relevant.

There are 3 important points:
1-greatly increase the fallen recovered for the winners
2-increase the cost of maintaining the unity
3-implement a different system of rebels

So finally in TW will be truly decisive battles instead of continuous siege to the city ...

Tell me what do you think of this ...

[Mister V]

greatly increase the fallen recovered for the winners

That would be something I agree with completely. It is good from a gameplay point of view, and it makes sense. During a battle, wouldn't most casualties be wounded/incapacitated and then treated (if their army was victorious). I'm no expert, but if, say, a soldier is wounded in the leg (or his horse is), he's as good as dead for battle purposes, so he just lies there or crawls back to his camp). However, in several months (each turn is several months after all) he would recover, which is represented by the number of fallen recovered. It would also make having one elite army for an entire campaign quite viable (I don't like to lose people, my casualties are usually very low, but after a couple of battles with an enemy who has able close combat infantry at his command my units are in need of serious retraining).

Rebels are "born to annoy" though, so I don't think that'll be changed. But yeah, we do need huge and glorious battles.

[Lucio Domicio Aureliano]

I think we should increase the cost of maintaining the unit, simultaneously increasing the fallen recovered (only for winners) almost to the point of having the same army as before. This will lead armies of elite away from the place where you retrain.

I hate small armies because it is very boring fight 2-3 units (it is a waste of time). Fighting with a large army against other large armies is more challenging (and realistic).

Decrease the number of armies around, but big.

The rebels that are formed from nothing just give discomfort because you forced to chase and fight, perhaps only 2 units.
I am not saying to remove them, but to adjust them so that they form large rebel armies, a few times.

Thus, every victory will really make sense and the consequences of it will be more relevant.

There are 3 important points:
1-greatly increase the fallen recovered for the winners
2-increase the cost of maintaining the unity
3-implement a different system of rebels

So finally in TW will be truly decisive battles instead of continuous siege to the city ...

Tell me what do you think of this ...

Intersting ideas. In an effort to make truly decisive battles it would be nice to work in diplomacy though. For instance, after you win some great victories the AI would, in turn, be more open to negotiate. Other possibility is that after a faction( not all factions) suffers a few great defeats some cities could rebel to represent those unhappy lords/vassals.

[Mister V]

Exactly... it would require a lot of scripting, if it's even possible. I hate defeating the whole army of a faction (eastern factions are for some reason more inclined to group their armies and send them towards me) and not getting anything for it. Well, it IS enjoyable, no doubt, but you'd think they'd be more cooperative, especially since they just lost several good generals and several years' worth of trained troops.
Of course the AI doesn't want to hand over regions, anythign else wouldn't be a sufficient prize, except maybe a large sum of money.

[Banzai!]

Just increase the income penalty with distance (aka corruption). Its not rocket science you know.