View Full Version : General impressions
V.T. Marvin
08-25-2014, 19:59
Hello EB2 fans,
hopefully your download and installation proceeded without too much trouble. Now we are eager to hear about your first impressions from playing the game for the first time. Your feedback is important for us to fine-tune various gameplay mechanics in order to provide even better experience in our next official release. So have fun and share your thoughts! :bow:
I_damian
08-25-2014, 20:07
Alright, been playing for 2 hours, though the vast majority of it was spent reading unit/building descriptions. First of all, I had no problems installing and I love everything. It's perfect.
The loading times are really fast, faster than I expected. I don't have an SSD but they're really fast compared to EB1.
I love how every province has a region description detailing the geography and history and any wonders there. I spent about an hour reading these alone!
In vanilla M2TW there was a feature in battle where you could "ping" all friendly and enemy troops, highlighting them. It's gone in EBII (unless I just can't see it) and I'd really like it back if possible. With each unit having so many different types of soldier (this is great) it can get really difficult sometimes to see who is who.
Bug - in battle, when sending a second unit up a ladder after the first unit has gone on the wall, the second unit stands on the parapets of the wall but does not move down on to the wall to fight. They get stuck as far as I can tell.
moisesjns
08-25-2014, 20:53
Just got done installing it. Got it running im installing your grahp mod. Game starts at first with small screen went to options changed it to my resolution. Restarted game after applying changes game starts full screen now. I have 2 crossfire 7850 amd and this may be exclusive to dual graph set up but nothing thats hard to fix.
second update. Game crashes for me at custom battle. odd. But oh well.
Everything is up and running. Im playing along in my campaign as Saka Rauka. Im hoping for indo greek units. But i doubt they are in.
Game is running great no slow time speed or nothing and im not even on SSD. Thank you very much EB 2 team i am really enjoying it. You guys are great at this modding.
4th Update. As of playing a battle and using campaign map. I have to say the blur from the EB 2 grahpics submod is too much for me to handle.
nope... here is what I got14151
Kingdoms disk in DVD drive. Correct Kingdoms install path... I guess
I_damian
08-25-2014, 21:22
I didn't install to kingdoms path, just the M2TW path (the one already in the box in the installer). Also you don't need the Kingdoms disk in the drive, just the normal M2TW disk.
nope... here is what I got14151
Kingdoms disk in DVD drive. Correct Kingdoms install path... I guess
Try this (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?663806-First-bug-report-(&p=14048532&viewfull=1#post14048532).
Runing it for about 10 mins... this mode... everything Rome 2 should have been.
Tried Tutorial campaing, it crashed. :)
Grand works perfectly.
I didn't install to kingdoms path, just the M2TW path (the one already in the box in the installer). Also you don't need the Kingdoms disk in the drive, just the normal M2TW disk.
That seems actually wrong damian. You DO need the Kingdoms CD. Bovi Thanx for the fix. That worked. Had grant write permissions to the EBII folder to extract there. But it worked. I think I'll enjoy my drink now, seed, catch up on a sitcom or other series. I can play EBII... the world is now right (more or less) and I need to change me signature. :)
I_damian
08-25-2014, 22:44
That seems actually wrong damian. You DO need the Kingdoms CD. Bovi Thanx for the fix. That worked. Had grant write permissions to the EBII folder to extract there. But it worked. I think I'll enjoy my drink now, seed, catch up on a sitcom or other series. I can play EBII... the world is now right (more or less) and I need to change me signature. :)
Yeah I just realized I have the M2TW GOLD edition, so one CD which is both M2 and Kingdoms. Glad you got it working!
and now for the general impression: I think I am in love again but dont tell my wife plz. Played the custom battle. Completely out of my element in MTWII battles after so many years on EBI. Played as the Kelts (yes Brennus... the Kelts) and won but I really had very little control of what was going on. I need to readjust my tactical awareness skills. Having a buzz going didn't help... or did it?
All hail the EBII team!!! in deed damian.
This game is trully beautiful
BIG thanx from all of us... really.
Runing it for about 10 mins... this mode... everything Rome 2 should have been.
Tried Tutorial campaing, it crashed. :)
Grand works perfectly.
Hilarious - completely forgot that we left the Tutorial campaigns in there. It was an idea whose time never came - Not sure if they ever worked! Thanks for spotting that, will make a note to remove these
The Outsider
08-25-2014, 23:27
Hey guys, first of all thank you for all your efforts over the years. The mod is great. It installs and runs fine, however, for some wierd reason it runs in a small window, not full screen. I tried changing video settings but it doesnt help. I have installed the graphics sub mod so maybe thats the problem though i dont know how to uninstall it. Any help would be appricieted. Thanks again.
Wow im at a loss for words guys (for once lol). Install went smooth as silk. Played a few custom battles with my sweboz against boii and others and was like wow this is what i really was waiting for when i bought rome2. Now Im only a few minutes into the grand campaign but its just so rich and polished...i like the intro movie at the beginning of each campaign. Great job guys. I had 1 ctd so far but it may be related to clicking too many faction icons like someone else already said. You boys did good :2thumbsup: Thank You All again. Now to disappear for a few days into my mancave.
Leon the Batavian
08-26-2014, 00:15
Its just beautiful.
Smooth install.
The real EB feel.
Working so far as I can see.
Thank you EB team for yet another brilliant mod!
(steam user)
easytarget
08-26-2014, 00:16
ugh, download speeds are slow and i don't torrent, guess i'll have to wait till tomm to see it, oh well, can't wait
rickinator9
08-26-2014, 00:26
I love it! Installation went smooth. The campaign map looks gorgeous. I do have some issues though:
- Ephesus uses Latin spelling in a sea of Greek spelled cities.
- I am not sure if it is working as intended, but running Phalangites are very slow and the running animation for them looks a bit odd in my opinion.
ugh, download speeds are slow and i don't torrent, guess i'll have to wait till tomm to see it, oh well, can't wait
We made some mirrors:
http://www.moddb.com/downloads/europa-barbarorum-2-first-release
http://www.gamefront.com/files/files/24436562/EB2.zip
Enjoy!
moisesjns
08-26-2014, 01:18
Tux. I believe you may want to let the Users know that by turning off their google chrome or web browser and just let the game download the speed increases drastically. I was going a steady 50 kbps untill i turned off steam and google chrome and was getting 500 kbps.
It's amazing, so nice to have this game back. I haven't noticed any bugs yet, it's far more stable than EB1's beta...
I think it's just great. I play the Pritanoi and had no crashes or the like.
a completely inoffensive name
08-26-2014, 02:33
First impression is that this is more amazing than I imagined. So much text to read brings out the uniqueness every region and makes me feel for the people living there.
I have played for about an hour and the only thing to suggest so far is tweaking the temple bonuses to make them more diverse and specialized.
First impression is that this is more amazing than I imagined. So much text to read brings out the uniqueness every region and makes me feel for the people living there.
I have played for about an hour and the only thing to suggest so far is tweaking the temple bonuses to make them more diverse and specialized.
This happens, but requires the higher level of temple buildings.
Due to missing this last night I only managed to play twenty mins before work so did a quick turn as pergamon as it is new and small.
Loved that you could recruit some elite units from the start and also the music was marvellous. Not sure what to do with those minor settlements though, are they just forts?
Played one battle against rebels and that seemed good but I play on a laptop so the controls were not right and I need to sort that out next time which may not be for a day or two. At a distance the units all looked brilliant.
Install was the easiest I've seen on a mod and I am playing on Steam. The intro video was brilliant as well.
All in all it is a fantastic game I'll drop more hours into then I can remember.
Also I started reading more history when I start playing EB1 (a lot more) and not sure I can increase the ammount again unless the descriptions in EB2 are included. If not please suggest a good book about the successor kingdoms which is affordable!
Thanks again it's brilliant!
I spent 2 hours mostly reading province and building descriptions. Brilliant stuff.
for some wierd reason it runs in a small window, not full screen
Because the loading times are... not the best, particularly when starting the game, I believe most people will want to have it windowed so that they can do other stuff while it's loading.
I think you should be able to get it fullscreen by editing M2TW/mods/EBII/EBII.cfg, and setting windowed = 0 instead of windowed = 1. But we've got an issue with the game overwriting the changes you do, so it may not work. Hopefully we can get rid of that problem soon.
Lysandros
08-26-2014, 14:17
I just fought a battle on the campaign map as Ptolemaioi against an equal force of Nabataens (Med./Med. difficulty). I'm very happy that most of the time I didn't know whether I'd be winning, though I started out on a low hill and shamelessly took advantage of the higher ground. But even then, it was a hard fight! Some units of mine were routed, and equally some of the enemy's. Battles seem much more exciting now! What an advancement!
Regarding the game's look, all the buidlings, the government system and appointing philoi and all that, you have surely done well. I like it very much so far!
Now... give me Kataphraktoi and Argyraspides!
I crashed to desktop while clicking through all factions in the campaign menu, and the game froze/didn't react anymore (but surprisingly wasn't listed as "not responding" in the task manager) after much clicking of mine through settlement menus. This was a Seleucid campaign. The icons were replaced with some other picture files (perhaps a unit or menu background/icon? I saw grass and spears where the "settlement details" and other buttons were supposed to be) just before. I try to make a screen when it happens again, reminded me of the blank unit cards of RTW which here were filled out with something.
I_damian
08-26-2014, 15:08
I've had the same freeze, except mine was when I was clicking on factions in the screen where you select which faction to play as. I clicked on them really quick to look at their position on the map (was trying to find Pergamon) and it froze. Perhaps it's due to clicking on too many things, too many times, too fast?
Siege battles take a looooooooooooooong time. I just took Rhegion as Roma. They have 4 units of Samnite Hastati, a Leves and a Toxotai. I had a full legion... took me like an hour to take the city. That was even with attacking the town center from 4 directions and speeding the game up to 6x speed.
It looks great, it feels great, it plays great.
Encoutered some bugs but nothing mayor.
Couple of questions:
- Is their a way to remove the HUD with 1 key? It was possible in EB
- Can you remove the banners that float above the soldiers?
- How do you remove the cutscenes (like gate breached and stuff)?
Lysandros
08-26-2014, 16:56
Played further as the Seleukids - couldn't resist. And I now see how you made it difficult for them, I think... relations get worse and worse... and I refused to give up settlements... let's see who is the mightiest king! I first invested in shrines to keep up order at reasonable levels. Then I got into debt. Into debt! I cannot remember when this had happened last. I wasn't prepared for it happening and only realised the red number a few turns later. One really has to take decisions on what to build and where. I did not disband many units as I thought I'd rather use them, but I guess one could have an easier start if one does - at a reasonable scale - and then invest the thus gained surplus into economy. Anyway, I'm building a Didaskaleion in Antiocheia now in the hope of gaining better traits and more profit by that for my philoi and other generals and family members.
Further remarks:
1. Eastern skirmishers seem quite expensive in relation to other units, how comes that? I can imagine they are more useful now, but is their upkeep intended to be as high as it is now?
2. I'm rather confused by the public order value. It seems far less affected by garrisons than in RTW, I knew that from plain MTW2. But I still don't know what affects it most. Is public unrest caused mainly by the different culture value? Because I placed spies in some towns who frequently rebel, but it seems not to have any impact.
3. Forgot the most important thing: it's great fun to play, thank you all very much, and I didn't have another crash! It was well worth waiting for wonderful EB2.
Elminster12
08-26-2014, 20:01
I just put in about an hour or so with the Bosporan Kingdom. Looks nice. Coming from EB1, it was easy to sort things out. Fought a few minor battles, built a few structures, nothing major.
I do have a criticism of the UI: it's all but impossible to read your treasury balance on the main screen if it's negative(i.e. red text) because it's on a reddish-brown background(at least with whatever UI the Bosporan Kingdom uses). I either need to strain my eyes to read it, or crack open the treasury page. The yellow text for a positive balance shows up just fine though.
Other than that, it seems pretty great.
I_damian
08-26-2014, 21:35
Because the loading times are... not the best, particularly when starting the game, I believe most people will want to have it windowed so that they can do other stuff while it's loading.
You're joking aren't you? It's one of the fastest loading games I've played. My specs are quad core i5 processor (3.4 GHz), 8gb RAM and 4gb GTX 770, just a basic 1TB hard drive and no SSD. Or in other words... a fairly standard gaming PC by today's standards for under £900.
The first thing about EB2 that delighted me was how fast it loaded. It was pretty much instant, both loading the game for the first time and loading after picking a faction. It loads way faster than Crusader Kings 2, way faster than Europa Universalis IV... in fact I've recently installed and been playing Galactic Civilizations 2 (not 3, not the new one, the old one...) and it loads about as fast as that does.
johnhughthom
08-26-2014, 22:22
It looks great, it feels great, it plays great.
Encoutered some bugs but nothing mayor.
Couple of questions:
- Is their a way to remove the HUD with 1 key? It was possible in EB
- Can you remove the banners that float above the soldiers?
- How do you remove the cutscenes (like gate breached and stuff)?
Screen lock removes the HUD. The other two should be fixable through the EBII config file in the EBII folder, but it appears the game overwrites it, so I'm not sure it's changeable at the minute.
Just ran a test campaign with Takshashila. Now that I know what to expect I can prepare myself for Indian domination! Great script with the Mauryan tribute! I don't know how it ends yet but it feels role-playing-y!
A beautiful game guys... congrats!
My first impressions so far:
https://i.imgur.com/lzwtMYr.gif
Aneximanes
08-26-2014, 22:57
Amazingly smooth install (even with the steam version).
Loadingtimes are fast as hell
My god, I love it!
Gaius Sempronius Gracchus
08-27-2014, 00:01
Install was a doddle, loading time is remarkable. The map is absolutely beautiful, the battles are a challenge and even as Rome it's a struggle to hold my nascent Italian empire together - I also like the fact that realistically (with the battle being as they are) I pretty much have to use only generals with Imperium. Absolutely engrossing...can't praise you enough for what you have produced.
LusitanianWolf
08-27-2014, 02:02
Absolutelly Loving it so far!!!!!!!!!!!! :2thumbsup::2thumbsup::2thumbsup::2thumbsup::2thumbsup::2thumbsup:
Only troubles I've run into so far:
Skirmishers just hanging around and not throwing their javelins when they should.
Kinsmen cavalry miss texture parts (you can see throught them) if we lower texture quality.
Besides that have been lots of fun, thank you so much! :bow:
FlamingTacos
08-27-2014, 02:24
I had some trouble with the install but that was due to another launcher mod I had and some of my own stupidity but after that the load times were fantastic, the game ran smoothly while some other ambitious mods have some issues, I haven't had a single crash, the textures are amazing and I have only played as the Koinon Hellenon thus far and beyond the unfinished parts which were to be expected this is perfect and even better than I thought it would be
Mithridates VI Eupator
08-27-2014, 08:30
Just ran a test campaign with Takshashila. Now that I know what to expect I can prepare myself for Indian domination! Great script with the Mauryan tribute! I don't know how it ends yet but it feels role-playing-y!
A beautiful game guys... congrats!
Very glad to hear that! The Mauryan tribute script was built in for the very purpose of giving some extra imersion, and giving the player a feeling that the world does not end only because the map does.
Just a question, did you try not to pay the tribute, or are you remaining loyal?
Antigonos Karchedonios
08-27-2014, 09:32
After playing about 4 hours into my Boii campaign I feel it's time for a first statement here.
So far I am really hugely impressed! The immersion is great! You really feel like a tribe in the slightly remote central European forrests and you know all around you, there are potential foes and you try to find out what they do. I went south taking the provinces north of the alps and am now eagerly watching the Romani and Aruernoi trying to subdue Northern italy and constantly wondering "should I raise more troops, just in case...but then the econmy will suffer...hmm...". At the same time there are fierce wars going on in the south-east (Greece) and I'm looking forward to whoever wins and might eventually come north. And in the east and North are even more potentiall foes slowly expanding in my direction(and one ally so far, the Lugiones). In the west all is quiet thanks to an alliance with the Aedui.
The recruting is really fine, a huge amount of diversity is available! Battles are really nice. They tend to be slower than EB I but that doesn't really bother me. I always had a bit more trouble to keep the ovwerview in a battle in Vanilla M2:TW than in RTW, this is the same with your mod, but maybe it's just me who is not capable. :clown: and not having everything under control adds actually a bit to the realism.
Concerning the battlefields I was especiallly impressed when storming a rebel nomad camp which proved to be a really beautiful hillfort! :yes:
I had hoped for a bit more ethnicity traits, at the moment all my fm/generals are simply Boii, but I think this might change when I expand further outside of their "core" territories. Also one more thing, do you plan to implement the "client ruler" thing in further releases? It always added to the feeling to have a "foreign" general with his local bodyguard in EB I.
All in all, I really love it and I really have to restrict myself so I spend enough time learnig for university exams instead of playing EB. Thank you so much once again EB Team!:2thumbsup:
this is great. can i ask something. for greeks can you build laarchia in every non greek culture? 1 as epeiros i conqeured a roman town north of taras and it wasnt availiable on building browzers
. 2second in native colonial building it say among others it needs 40% eastern culture
Not normally someone to participate in the forums, but having seen the quality of this beta, recognition of how well polished it is even at this stage is needed. Well done!
So far have gone through 150 turns with an Areuakoi campaign, with only 1 CTD. Far far far less than EB1. So I figured I'd pass on the feedback from it.
No real bugs experienced that haven't already been identified (skirmishers, roman settlements, agent unit cards..)with the AI showing a better grasp then I expected. It still doesn't understand the fort system properly though. Some cavalry corpses had black squaring sprites viewed only from a distance (not sure if experienced by modders or others), not something experienced on my Asus laptop with any other game/mod which can play R2 even if it only was for 50 minutes before it got canned.
The Lusotannan stacks had me glued to the screen each turn praying that nothing came towards the Pyrenees. Once or twice though it did lift sieges where it should have pushed and taken them as they had the forces and on VH/VH I expected no mercy, and after about 50 turns had turned an 6 to 7 stack v 1 to 2 stack disadvantage to an all brown 'Roman eagle standard' ;) Spain just as the Arverni and Rome (who also assassinated my leading general) declared war on me in the north.
The only faction destroyed not by my hand is the Arverni, which was a Gallic power broker at 100 turns and then demolished from all sides.
The economy even though at times a little limited in building selections and variety, something I am sure will develop further in the future, has played exceptionally well, ebbing and flowing and causing all sorts of headaches as is expected.
Battles are great, loving how the cavalry works, much more realistic then the bulldozers of vanilla. Loving the break and reforming moral. Loving the slow speed and melee, much more of the Last Kingdom mod feel to the battle which is brilliant at showing IMO a better representation of the engine.
In terms of going forward I would personally love to see more of the detail that came from EB in the role playing scripts (something I hope to see come in later), from the cannot declare war on X rebel settlement without X declaring war, mission scripting (if it can be at all separated from the generic med2 files), and more of the traits and ancillaries. I only got notifications of starving, never the belts tightened etc from EB that I loved, showing the progression. Also would love to see some of the economic scripts incorporated from other mods etc and altered to flesh that dynamic more, but that's being uber critical of what I am already ecstatic about.
Some of the siege path finding still needs a focus as units (although playing on huge) cannot be controlled with any flexibility. And yeah fully aware of time and numbers etc plus using DBM models etc so not being negative but such aspects will only further enhance this aspect and immersion.
Also is the Celt-Iberian skirmish cav supposed to use the but of the spear attacking hand to hand in its animation? I almost posted it as a bug but then though actually its a quite practical alternate swing of a spear so I thought I'd just ask. Have a screenshot if need be.
Lastly out of curiosity are people involved fans of or using files from Legion Gold, or 0 AD? I ask as some of the building models and voice files seem to be the same, to which I love as both are quality attempts at attempting to provide historical RTS.
Again so far blown away by the quality of this product. To think R2 could have potentially have been this with nice shinny graphics by just involving the community. Well done to all involved! You have exceeded all expectations!
Very glad to hear that! The Mauryan tribute script was built in for the very purpose of giving some extra imersion, and giving the player a feeling that the world does not end only because the map does.
Just a question, did you try not to pay the tribute, or are you remaining loyal?
Started a thread on that before I saw your post. Maybe I missed it but I never saw how to reject. I just got a "receipt"!
Thanks everyone for the feedback! That's what we need to make Eb2 better.
Played a bit more where I can mainly just doing the first couple of turns for some factions to get an idea of what is going on.
Love the pace of the campaign and the battles. I do like the way it takes a while to pacify a new region.
Mainly been doing seige battles but that is standard for TW games.
Not sure what to make of missiles as they do very llittle damage but if that is the way it was I will adapt. Happy with the cavalry though.
The only thing I would like to complain about is the campaign map looks a bit flat to me and it is a shame that some areas of cities look open but they are not.
Also when you nominate a new heir apparent the music is the same as an old Civilization game I used to play which is no bad thing. Is that on purpose. And I hope Frankie Howard gets in this build like in EB1 as the comedian.
Really happy with it all especially the pace of battles.
Thanks again as it is what I hoped for.
I_damian
08-28-2014, 22:55
Played about 20 hours now so far, mostly the first 10-50 turns as various different factions so no in-depth campaigns yet.
Much as I love the slow pace of battles, I think it's way too harsh in sieges. I assaulted a city that had just one unit of Hoplitai (Greek classical Hoplites) as its garrison. It sat in the town square. I attacked it from in front and behind with two units of Principes. Both unleashed their javelins first and both charged and completely surrounded the Hoplites. This battle took more than 10 minutes to end and that was with battle speed on 6.0x. Siege assaults are quite painful to play through due to the time battles take. I don't even bother to assault cities anymore, I just besiege them until they give up or sally out to attack me.
Also I think the happiness of conquered cities is too harsh as well. In a Rome game I conquered Tarentum on turn 4. I had my faction leader and 19 units garrisoned there, allied government + allied democracy governments built, level 3 temple (15% happiness) and I still had to have low taxes and an enormous garrison like 20-years later. I'm scared to even imagine what this will be like toward the middle of the game when every city has max population.
Bug - if you're besieging a city and the enemy attacks you with an army and the garrison of the city joins in, if you win this battle the game crashes.
Bug - Persepolis (the wonder) isn't in Persepolis, it's in Halicarnassus. (Or the city next to it, one of those two in the very south-western tip of Anatolia that are under Ptolemaioi control at game start).
many things to note: will be fixing them. :yes:
a completely inoffensive name
08-29-2014, 03:08
So I am now about 120 turns into my campaign as Rome. There are a couple things I wanted to mention.
Campaign AI does seems a bit passive (only dl the new CAI just now), I was never attacked at all until my last 5 turns, but that may be because I made sure to place lots of troops in my border settlements and "minor settlements" so the AI was probably hesitant to attack.
Problem I see with making the CAI more aggressive is that by the time I am ready to expand beyond my next door cities in any campaign I am afraid it will all be taken up by other factions. Not once have I been able to attack Syracuse when it was rebels, Carthage takes over all of Sicily within 40 turns every campaign and leaves me having to immediately start the Punic Wars when I am still struggling to maintain control over southern italy filled with greek citizens.
I know that the command stars might be bugged, and I dont know if it has been affecting the AI generals as well. But I would say that if you are going to make the CAI more aggressive, (which it should be just a tad more) try to make certain rebel cities that have a history of independence have generals with lots of command stars.
I would say to not change in any way the current happiness of recently conquered cities, because otherwise the campaign would be too easy (in terms of choices) and would be over very quickly. See, I feel like there is a point in having the campaign be 1000+ turns, if campaigns are only going to take 100-400 turns then just cut the time period down anyway because otherwise its a waste of resources. That was actually my biggest complaint in EB1 actually was that there wasn't enough penalties for conquering other cultures, so I could have taken the known world as Rome before Caesar was even born. The choice between military occupation/assimilation and allied state depends on CAI to a large extent, too aggressive or too passive makes the decision a non-choice.
Ideally I would want to see a campaign AI that attempts to take over cities more frequently but is constantly losing and regaining control over border cities as people of different cultures rebel and slowly acclimate to spheres of influence over long periods of time. Otherwise, I would say design wise, its wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. The factions you have chosen seem to balance each other out wonderfully. It's funny because I actually like sending my expensive spies out into germania just to keep an eye on the three way battle between the Boii and Sweboz and Adeui. They all like to go for cities just north of the Alps.
So I am now about 120 turns into my campaign as Rome. There are a couple things I wanted to mention.
Campaign AI does seems a bit passive (only dl the new CAI just now), I was never attacked at all until my last 5 turns, but that may be because I made sure to place lots of troops in my border settlements and "minor settlements" so the AI was probably hesitant to attack.
Problem I see with making the CAI more aggressive is that by the time I am ready to expand beyond my next door cities in any campaign I am afraid it will all be taken up by other factions. Not once have I been able to attack Syracuse when it was rebels, Carthage takes over all of Sicily within 40 turns every campaign and leaves me having to immediately start the Punic Wars when I am still struggling to maintain control over southern italy filled with greek citizens.
I know that the command stars might be bugged, and I dont know if it has been affecting the AI generals as well. But I would say that if you are going to make the CAI more aggressive, (which it should be just a tad more) try to make certain rebel cities that have a history of independence have generals with lots of command stars.
I would say to not change in any way the current happiness of recently conquered cities, because otherwise the campaign would be too easy (in terms of choices) and would be over very quickly. See, I feel like there is a point in having the campaign be 1000+ turns, if campaigns are only going to take 100-400 turns then just cut the time period down anyway because otherwise its a waste of resources. That was actually my biggest complaint in EB1 actually was that there wasn't enough penalties for conquering other cultures, so I could have taken the known world as Rome before Caesar was even born. The choice between military occupation/assimilation and allied state depends on CAI to a large extent, too aggressive or too passive makes the decision a non-choice.
Ideally I would want to see a campaign AI that attempts to take over cities more frequently but is constantly losing and regaining control over border cities as people of different cultures rebel and slowly acclimate to spheres of influence over long periods of time. Otherwise, I would say design wise, its wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. The factions you have chosen seem to balance each other out wonderfully. It's funny because I actually like sending my expensive spies out into germania just to keep an eye on the three way battle between the Boii and Sweboz and Adeui. They all like to go for cities just north of the Alps.
It seems you and us have the same goals.
Thanks for trying out the mod and giving some constructive criticism. I hope you post again after trying out he new CAI, mate!
:bow:
mikeboix
08-29-2014, 10:52
Everything looks amazing, you've done a great work. But I have a couple complaints:
-Battles are too long. Troops have lots of points of defence and a few of attack. Cavalry charges, even charging from behind and using the best horsemen units, don't make much damage. A bit frustrating.
-Elefants. They are as expensive as a whole army but they don't make much damage. Pretty underpowered.
-Pikemen. They are incredibly overpowered. You cant killed em with cavalry (of course), nor with infantry nor attacking with projectiles.
I suppose all these are minor changes than can be overhauled with submods. Cheers! :D
Sand Dweller
08-29-2014, 11:29
Everything looks amazing, you've done a great work. But I have a couple complaints:
-Battles are too long. Troops have lots of points of defence and a few of attack. Cavalry charges, even charging from behind and using the best horsemen units, don't make much damage. A bit frustrating.
-Elefants. They are as expensive as a whole army but they don't make much damage. Pretty underpowered.
-Pikemen. They are incredibly overpowered. You cant killed em with cavalry (of course), nor with infantry nor attacking with projectiles
Yes, I subscribe to this oppinion. Also, I must say I'm a bit unhappy that the Getai doesn't have some of their important settlements, such as Argedava or Porolissum (which later become important roman garrison), Piroboridava... And another thing I must say is that I been a bit sad and dissapointed that Pahlavan didnt have the iranian voices... Hope you'll once again use iranian voice sounds for them like in the first EB.
Anyway, its just a 2.0 release, I am optimistic because I see you guys really are serious because you didnt let this awesome mod to slowly die and perhaps you lost time from your life giving us the most waited mod.
-Battles are too long.
Try to tweak the values at the top of mods/EBII/data/battle_config.xml, they are global lethality ratios.
-Battles are too long. Troops have lots of points of defence and a few of attack. Cavalry charges, even charging from behind and using the best horsemen units, don't make much damage. A bit frustrating.
-Elefants. They are as expensive as a whole army but they don't make much damage. Pretty underpowered.
-Pikemen. They are incredibly overpowered. You cant killed em with cavalry (of course), nor with infantry nor attacking with projectiles.
1.Well that's probably a matter of preference I like them,but yes cavalry could be a bit stronger when charing the rear of an engeaded unit.But I have to disagree you can rout units qute quicky when charging them ,even "pikemen".Two or three times should do the job unless they have a really good general.
2.Never tried them.
3.Are you attaking them on the front..?Because that's not very smart ,pin them down, press them of the flanks with mobile units and then charge your cavarly.
[QUOTE=mikeboix;2053613111]
-Battles are too long. Troops have lots of points of defence and a few of attack. Cavalry charges, even charging from behind and using the best horsemen units, don't make much damage. A bit frustrating./QUOTE]
Try this: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?147967-Faster-Battles-%28temporary-submod-for-EB-2-0-0%29&goto=newpost
Shadowwalker
08-29-2014, 18:21
I finally had some time to play EB 2.0 and would like to give you a (not so) brief feedback about my experiences and share my opinion about that first release of EB 2.0.
Two warnings I have to give though.
First: Caution, wall of text incoming. I simply don't think that a two-line post would do justice to this game. Not after the team spending almost 8 years on developing it. ~:)
Second: I am biased. I have never waited for a game for such a long time, neither did I ever feel such an overwhelming joy about a release. So while I am not blind to the things that aren't perfect or aren't working well (yet), you'll probably notice a tendency to be forgiving.
Anyway. I decided to split my "review" in several parts, just to make it easier for you (to read) as well as for me (to not forget important things I want to mention).
Technical part (download, installation, stability, performance)
Nothing much to say here - other than this: The download worked absolutely perfect. It could have been a bit faster, admittedly, but I won't complain about that, especially not since I don't use torrents (by principle). And since I slept & then was at work while the download was done, I didn't waste any time anyway.
The installation worked like a charm, too.
So: Perfect delivery, as far as I am concerned.
I encountered exactly two crashes so far - and both of which are not due to the mod as far as I'm aware. I had some buttons/images suddenly showing parts of unrelated graphics (like a part of a building description replacing a unit card or a part of a unit card replacing a button image). This is something I have encountered in various M2TW mods before (worst in Das Heilige Römische Reich), so I am used to the workaround: quicksave as soon as it happens (it only ever happens on the campaign map during the players turn anyway, so you don't lose any progress), logout (during the logout M2TW crashes), start the game again, load Quicksave. No trouble. ~:)
Other than that the game has been perfectly stable for me. And since the common after-battle-crashes of EB I were in my book the biggest annoyance of that mod, I'm very much pleased this time. ~:)
Next thing I need to mention is the performance. And once again I am absolutely stunned. There had been several topics in the various forums about the requirements for EB 2.0 and they left me with increasing worry. I have a really old machine with only 2 GB RAM and a graphics card with even less memory. So imagine my surprise when I realized that EB 2.0 actually loads about as fast as it's predecessor on this computer.
Even better - I play the mod with all details on max and huge units, and I rarely have any lag, not even during large battles. The only thing I am not able to use is Tux' Graphic Enhancement Mod, this one has a severe negative impact on the performance, unfortunately.
Main menu and strat map graphics
After the loading process I was at first much surprised, almost shocked about the rather minimalistic main menu graphics. But after several more game starts I consider this very much fitting, to be honest. Infact I have come to love the main menu in the meantime.
The map is . . . . how to put it? Perhaps this way:
Gods! I thought I had been prepared for an awesome campaign map by the dozens of screenshots you guys posted during the last months, but it is a real difference to just see that map on your own screen.
I started a Sabaean campain, so South Arabia was the first thing I saw. After a few moments I couldn't resist any longer and used toggle_fow. And then I spend almost half an hour (!), just scrolling over the map and grinning like an idiot. Until that moment Paeninsula Italica II had (in my opinion) the most beautiful campaign map of all TW mods. Now they are second to yours. The EB 2.0 map is not perfect, if you ask me (since I miss the wonderfully high mountains - the Caucasus, for example, almost looks like a hilly rather than mountaineous area), but it's close. And not only the map itself, the strat map models, too. Simply love it and can't think of many ways to improve it:
(1) Would love to see the higher mountains from EB 1 back
(2) Would love to see more Minor Settlements - since they aren't provoking siege battles anymore, I can't see any disadvantages to that.
Other than that I can't think of much at the moment, there are so many little details to see, so many nice touches that make a campaign more immersive. Be it the ressource models, the diplomat/spy/assassin characters that are so wonderfully unique, the General/Captain models, the buildings (settlements, mines, ports, watchtowers). I could go on an on, praising so many things here.
As I have said many times before: One of the first games I ever played was Civilization I and I am still very much obsessed with nation building and therefore campaign maps. And EB 2.0 has - to me - set a new standard in this regard.
The Unit Cards needed a bit of accustomization though, admittedly. I am still used to EB I and it's "polished"/"clean" unit cards and the new ones have (of course) a completely different style. There are some that I instantly loved (East Coast Levies, the Sabean Noble Infantry or Ethiopian Spearmen, for example), others are "just" nice.
The building icons on the other hand are simply exactly what I hoped for. I always loved the building icons from The Last Kingdom, and yours are on the same quality level. Simply wonderful.
Battlemap graphics
Haven't seen many different battle maps yet (fought 3 siege battles in South Arabia when the enemy sallied forth, one siege battle where I attacked and 3 battles in the Sands of Arabia so far), what I saw made my battles last even longer though, since I had to pause the game ever so often to just look at the beautiful units and the equally beautiful surroundings. I'm very much looking forward to see other battlegrounds (won't start custom battles though, I just never play custom battles because they seem - due to the lack of a surrounding campaign - pretty pointless to me).
Gameplay mechanics
I know, there are more features missing than implemented at the moment, but what I saw so far made me grin once more. Although I have to admit that I was like "wtf?!" when the culture of my little kingdom suddenly changed. (well, suddenly for me who had completely neglected a certain hint in a certain government building description :rolleyes: )
There are a lot of things I don't understand at all yet, but it was the same with EB I years back and I don't worry too much about that. Learning by doing - the next Saba campaign will be a bit less chaotic. :laugh4:
I'm very much looking forward to additions to the strategic part of the game. Oh, and hopefully more buildings, too. I am about 150 turns into that campaign and Maryab already grew to huge and has not that many buildings left to construct.
More buildings - and less units per turn, too, if you ask me. I started a Pergamon campaign recently (without any battles so far, just sitting in Pergamon and building up :laugh4: ). And this one town has a recruitment pool of 8 (!) phalanxes (which also need only one turn to be replenished). I'm talking a bit further about this below (in the "Issues, questions and things I just don't understand" section).
Battle mechanics
Frightening. That's perhaps the best description of my first impressions. I tried to do what I usually (in EB I) do in a new Saba campaign - siege and the next turn attack a nearby settlement to get rid of the negative income. So I recruited the Ethiopian Spearmen, combined all my units into the very first "Royal Sabaean Army" and laid siege on Timna, building three rams.
Next turn I attacked from three different gates. And got completely slaughtered. Not even my generals were able to fight their way through one of the densely packed spearmen formations (several units each) the defenders used to block every entrance to the town plaza. The archers behind their lines decimated my troops (not that they killed my men quickly, but they had devastating effect on the morale of my soldiers). And in the end the Sabaean King, his heir and their once proud army ran away from Timna, having lost about 60% of their troops.
Since that experience I haven't attacked another town, I now just wait until they sally. That way I still suffer heavy losses, but I at least win the battle. :laugh4:
To tell a long story short - I haven't got a grip on EB 2.0 regarding to the battles. My usual tactics don't work anymore and I lack the cavalry to try something completely different.
Issues, questions and things I just don't understand
Of course EB 2.0 isn't perfect yet. You know it, you told us so way before release and it would have been utterly stupid to not believe you on this (after all it was not only Moros who said so. We all know that Moros likes a good deceive ~;p ). And before I start the ranting I just want to make clear once more that I very, very much enjoy the game in his current state.
That said - here's the (not complete) list of things I wonder or mutter about at the moment:
(1) There are - for my taste - way too many stacks around. Nabataea for example has 2 cities (Rekem, Bostra), but 4 full stacks and a half stack in each city. Pergamon has 2 full stacks with Pergamon alone, Makedonia has like 5 or 6 fullstacks and some halfstacks with 4 settlements. And so on.
During my brief glance at Pergamon I noticed that this may be because of several things working together:
- the units are a lot cheaper than in EB 1
- the replenishment rates of certain units (the phalangitai for example) are really high
- the maximum recruitment pools are really high as well (the mentioned 8 phalangitai in one single city are a good example)
- the money script for the AI means that they have a lot of free money to spend each turn
I expect this to change during the further development since you guys mentioned that the campaign balance has been very basic at best for the first release.
(2) My generals never get any loyalty, they only ever lose it. I usually get characters come to age with 1-3 points of loyalty ( one had 4, one had zero, all others were within the mentioned range). I instantly send the to my Capital Maryab where both a school and the faction leader are. And when they reach the age of 20, they have 2 points loyalty left at best, in most cases they have zero. Which means that they rebels as soon as they spend a single turn outside of towns. Is this intended? If not - what am I doing wrong here?
Same is true for command, confidence and influence by the way. I consider myself lucky if they have 1 point left in each attribute after some years, many of them have no single point in any attribute.
And to make things worse, I don't even see them getting any traits that would explain that. My generals usually get the Mistress ancillary and the Arabian Falconer ancillary. And the only traits I can remember to have seen (aside the "Sharp/Charismatic/Vigorous", "[season]", "unschooled" and "governor" traits) are a trait that raises construction costs by 5% and the equivalent that lowers the costs by 5%. I have never seen a single trait changing any of the confidence/loyalty/influence values.
(I did see one or two that add or substract authority (like "established ruler") but they have apparently no influence on the other generals' loyalty.)
Are all of these traits hidden by chance?
(3) I don't understand the culture system to be honest. Saba is Eastern Tribal at first (or am I wrong about this?). And according to a post by Moros (over at the TWC, iirc) temples of Almagah raise the "Eastern Imperial" culture level. But why do my cities then have ever lower Eastern Tribal level while Arid Nomadism is rising?
(Looking forward to Moros' guide on this and expect to learn a lot by reading it.)
(4) How to convert a nomad camp into a settled community?
(5) Why does every unit that could with some imagination count as a hoplite style unit have a more devastating charge than Cataphracts? Sure, a Hoplite phalanx charge was a terrible thing for their enemies (the persians at Marathon could tell a story or two about that, for example :laugh4: ), but 28? Or even 31, like the Shipri Tukul (which have a new name, I know ~;) )?
Also: why do very similar units have so very differing prices?
Okay, these things are probably my main concerns at the moments. More may follow as I advance in the campaign. ~;)
tl;dr:
Thanks a lot for a very enjoyable first release, looking forward to the further improvements. :2thumbsup:
Don't take Pergamon as a model for all settlements, in EBII's world there are few provinces that are capable of growing to Hellenistic Metropolis level and also have military colonies. Thus these "power-houses" so to speak are regions to be cherished and capable of supplying a large amount of troops...
But such provinces are not that common, nevertheless with a larger amount of feedbacks thanks to the release we will be able to spot how this effects the gameplay and tweak accordingly :)
As for the replenishment rates, Phalangitai are pretty professional and take time to train, they are not levies and now you should understand the importance of Machimoi and Pantodapoi ^^
While for the different prices, without specific examples it is difficult to answer. However in EBII social status is also reflected in the pricing so that might be it...
Almost forgot sorry, to convert into a settled community you will need to lower Nomadism, but I don't know at which percentage sorry, and afterwards you should be able to build the "walls"...
Shadowwalker
08-29-2014, 19:02
Don't take Pergamon as a model for all settlements, in EBII's world there are few provinces that are capable of growing to Hellenistic Metropolis level and also have military colonies. Thus these "power-houses" so to speak are regions to be cherished and capable of supplying a large amount of troops...
But such provinces are not that common, nevertheless with a larger amount of feedbacks thanks to the release we will be able to spot how this effects the gameplay and tweak accordingly :)
Good to know that it's not the case with every province :)
As for the replenishment rates, Phalangitai are pretty professional and take time to train, they are not levies and now you should understand the importance of Machimoi and Pantodapoi ^^
I may have worded it in a way that can be misunderstood. I know that Pezhetairoi are professional troops that need a lot of time and effort to be trained. That's exactly why I wonder about the fact that you can recruit a unit of them each turn in Pergamon. I would have expected it to be 4 (or 12 :creep:) turns before a full unit is replenished. ~;)
While for the different prices, without specific examples it is difficult to answer. However in EBII social status is also reflected in the pricing so that might be it...
I'll come back to this as soon as I see the units again, can't remember the details at the moment, only know that I saw it with javelin cavalry and spearmen. ~:)
It's pretty okay.
No real installation problems. Haven't played enough to comment on stability, although it did crash once when I tried to start a campaign, citing an 'unspecified error'.
Skirmishers basically don't work and cavalry is ineffective. In my test battle, the skirmishers on both sides usually ran away from each other before they fired a volley, had a very slow rate of fire and didn't seem effective against the slow-moving phalangites either. They may as well have not even been there.
The big problem, as I see it, is that there are no unit flags so it's really difficult to tell what is going on zoomed out, or if you're fighting a faction similar to yours. When you select a unit, it isn't highlighted in any way, making it even harder to tell what's going on in a battle. I can't even imagine how much of a pain in the ass a siege battle, woodland map or any situation where your forces are unevenly distributed would be to play because of these issues.
Overall, the mod shows potential but the visibility issue is a big one which turned me off playing it.
After a brutal assault on the walls of Athens involving 4 siege towers and barrages of missiles from both sides followed by a very, very slow and bloody advance through the streets with my Makedonian phalanxes, I managed to pin the Koinon forces in the city square from multiple sides and destroy them to a man, including 4 of their faction members, destroying their faction in the process.
It took over an hour and 20 minutes in total, and it was probably in my top 10 battles in the whole TW series, ever.
If I was to make a suggestion, maybe the lethality of combat needs to be increased a bit. But other than that...It's amazing.
Thank you for all your hard work.
Tyrfingr
08-29-2014, 21:26
First impressions (as Pergamon)
Within the first rounds, I had secured my southern borders by forming an alliance with the AS. Next, I got a "mission" from my AS allies to invade Bythnia. Said and done, all armies merged into one and laid siege to Nikaia.
The defenders had been reinforced from the countryside, and they sallied forth. The odds were 3:5 to my disadvantage, and the battle was long and I was on the brink of a complete rout when my light lancers (loving this unit, by the way) charged into the enemy general and he was killed. The enemies fled and I was victorious. The battle was one of my greatest EVER in the combined history of EB1 and EB2.
Loving this game!
I may have worded it in a way that can be misunderstood. I know that Pezhetairoi are professional troops that need a lot of time and effort to be trained. That's exactly why I wonder about the fact that you can recruit a unit of them each turn in Pergamon. I would have expected it to be 4 (or 12 ) turns before a full unit is replenished.
I haven't played them yet but do you have more than one buidling that let's you train them?
Ok just started a test campaign I could only recruite them every 4 turns.
The defenders had been reinforced from the countryside, and they sallied forth. The odds were 3:5 to my disadvantage, and the battle was long and I was on the brink of a complete rout when my light lancers (loving this unit, by the way) charged into the enemy general and he was killed. The enemies fled and I was victorious. The battle was one of my greatest EVER in the combined history of EB1 and EB2.
Had something simliar with the Saba:The enemy sallied out and after a long fight their numerical superiority got me and most of my units routed,I managed to use my general to rally most of them and formed a second line of defence and I was actually winning.
Then most of his routed men turned back from the city square and the battle was in their favor again....and again my most of my men routed.But I managed to form a another line and fought back.
I still lost but I retained half of my army while 70% of theirs was defeated,I would have probably won if I had cavalry and if was a really epic battle.
joshmahurin
08-29-2014, 23:00
musty the battle visibility can be changed by editing the EBII.cfg file in your M2TW/mods/EBII folder.
under the [game] section change
disable_arrow_markers = 0
and if unit banners aren't showing up add
show_banners = 1
I_damian
08-30-2014, 01:00
Enjoying a H/M game as Hayasdan with the campaign AI fix. I like how the Seleukids don't instantly wipe you out now. I was able to get an alliance and trade rights with them right at the start and they've left me alone for 50 turns. I turned off FOW to see how they were doing though and they aren't losing any provinces, they're actually growing... which is scary because I'll have to fight them eventually.
I have to say though, skirmishers are more or less useless. Archers can be okay in siege battles when you're defending. They can also inflict minor damage against unarmoured enemy units like other archers but beyond that they're a waste of a unit slot. Javelin-throwing skirmishers such as the very basic Akontistai and the like are totally useless. A volley of javelins from those guys won't kill a single enemy soldier, even if thrown at another unit of Akontistai. Likewise, the javelin-throwing cavalry are useless when used to throw their javelins. Even when thrown into the back of an engaged unit they do no damage.
I don't think cavalry is useless at all though, despite what a lot of people seem to be saying. Their charges aren't devastating, true, but their effect on enemy morale is massive when you charge them into the flank or rear. They're also really good at taking out enemy light troops, like they should be. They're even good against the heavier type of skirmishing troops, such as Euzenoi.
Centurio
08-30-2014, 02:29
Haven't had a chance to post because of moving into the university, and I don't have my game with me unfortunately, but I did get to play for some time, and there were quite a few moments when I was like "yes, Rome II as it was meant to be!!!"
I understand that not all of the features are in the build yet, and some are incomplete. But aside from some small errors (which are unavoidable when working on such a huge work of ART like this) I've had no trouble with the game. Not once did it crash on me, nor did it ever cause any disappointment. For all that has been done, I'm impressed, and that is saying a lot, considering how high my expectations were for this mod.
Also, all of the features from EB I that were implemented (the phalanx, overhand spear animations) seemed greatly improved in the Medieval II engine, and I was especially impressed with how the pike formations pressed really hard and had a tendency to get compact and disorganized in a way that felt more natural, other than on the RTW engine, which always felt more like a glitch than a mechanic. That behavior seemed more realistic to me, as far as my knowledge goes, so good job on that one! And, not to mention, those new javelin throwing animations, where the soldiers run forward and throw their javelins (with a higher velocity, it looks like?) are cooler than any other basic innovation I've seen in a while.
I noticed during my Pergamon and Pritanoi campaigns that some horses (from different units) are of varying sizes, which I appreciate, since not everyone was riding the same breed of horse. Good choice on that one.
As has been said already, skirmishers of any type don't work very well, but I never really used them for anything other than garrison troops so I'm okay with that.
Although one thing I did notice was that during some of the death animations(the long, cinematic styled kill sequences) the dying soldier would spazz out, then lay still as normal once the animation was finished.
I've only been able to play a little bit, but something struck me in the one siege battle I did.
As Pritanoi I attacked a nearby rebel town and the rams weren't able to knock down walls... only gates. Is this a bug?
Also, once inside the city the lanes were very narrow, but not visually. It looked like there was a large open space to fight in around the main square but the area was impassible, forcing the battle to be fought in very narrow lanes hemmed in by invisible walls. I really do hope that this is a bug and not a desired feature.
Been an EB player and fan for years, can't wait to play more of EB2!
Antinous
08-30-2014, 07:45
Hey guys I gotta say that the game is spectacular. I've started three campaigns to get a good feel for it and am really liking what I am seeing. I only have one real problem and that is money bonus for the AI. As Pergamon I have most of Asia Minor and the Levant, but I'm having trouble scrounging the money together to field more than four armies while Makedon with only four provinces has around six or seven. Same with Koinon Hellenon and Epeiros; really any faction within the game. Even Kimmerios with one region has three full armies. Besides that though I am loving it and agree with many that Rome 2 should have been more like this.
Side-note: Do I just keep building Hellenic infrastructure to increase Hellenic culture?
Excellent so far! Everyone's providing in-detail reports so far and I feel I have little to contribute :P In fact, the only complaint I have at the moment is the color of the Boii line when you click on Faction Rankings. It's so white I can barely see it lol.
Even Kimmerios with one region has three full armies.
Side-note: Do I just keep building Hellenic infrastructure to increase Hellenic culture?
You may want to try the new campaign AI that Granto made available. They are more likely to spend their troops quickly then, instead of turtling up and building up a lot of passive stacks.
Colonies are what will convert culture I believe.
musty the battle visibility can be changed by editing the EBII.cfg file in your M2TW/mods/EBII folder.
under the [game] section change
disable_arrow_markers = 0
and if unit banners aren't showing up add
show_banners = 1
disable_arrow_markers=1 is you get a selected unit to be highlighted on the battlefield. I thought is wasn't exactly clear from your post. I had to test it to verify. :)
Likewise, the javelin-throwing cavalry are useless when used to throw their javelins. Even when thrown into the back of an engaged unit they do no damage.
Actually I have indication that this type of unit (the indian variant) is a decent unit to attack elephants with.
I_damian
08-30-2014, 14:37
Hey guys I gotta say that the game is spectacular. I've started three campaigns to get a good feel for it and am really liking what I am seeing. I only have one real problem and that is money bonus for the AI. As Pergamon I have most of Asia Minor and the Levant, but I'm having trouble scrounging the money together to field more than four armies while Makedon with only four provinces has around six or seven. Same with Koinon Hellenon and Epeiros; really any faction within the game. Even Kimmerios with one region has three full armies. Besides that though I am loving it and agree with many that Rome 2 should have been more like this.
Side-note: Do I just keep building Hellenic infrastructure to increase Hellenic culture?
Culture conversion can be a pain - eventually you'll get the option to build a colony which will give a 1% bonus to culture conversion. To build the colony I think you need to build a road and that fort & waystation building, then you get the option to build a colony.
Antinous
08-30-2014, 20:18
I've been wondering about that colony feature. Thanks for explaining is Damian and I'll try the new AI Bovi!
alexkon3
08-30-2014, 22:41
For a beta release this thing is incredible. I loved eb 1 so much and this is the worthiest successor to one of the best mods in history. of course there are some issues but for me they are mostly engine related (units not following orders, path finding) and some random crashes main menu. and there are some minor things (Sacred band infantry has a lower upkeep cost than liby-phoenecian hoplites?) But overall its just awesome.... its already awesome and i haven't even tried one of the new factions haha. Thank you eb team. thank you for all your hard work and the love you put in to this project. thank you thank you thank you. it was worth all the wait.
Alcibiade
08-31-2014, 08:37
This mod makes me happy. There are a few minor weird things with the anims, but in general, playing it is like a dream.
I'll try to be more critical next time, just like in constructiv cristicism, but right now, the result easily meet my expectations, which were huge :verycool:
Roy Orbisson used to sing : " In dreams I play EB 2 ". Well, I play it for real.
I wanted to say I played as Hayasdan and the General's bodyguard and the Caucus Spearmen were breathtakingly good. Also the music was very atmospheric and made it feel like it was a battle rather than a soundtrack.
Everything else is still a wonder and really liked the Averni's rams. Oh and my wife really liked their campaign map music.
Thanks again and AI seems much improved for the campaign.
Seems good so far, all of my problems (projectiles feel weak, units feel just unresponsive enough to make it annoying, you can put a unit on two sides of a tower like you could in rome, when dragging to position units in cities you cant go close to buildings for some reason which is very annoying) has to do with medieval 2 rather than the mod itself, though it would be nice if you could fix those though.
Also, KH went from being one of the hardest starts economically to you literally swimming in mnai, earned more per turn than when playing as carthage.
Ozonius Tomicus
08-31-2014, 19:25
Download speed using the torrent link via my DSL connection was great, completed in 33 minutes the day after release and I have been seeding since then.
The install under the default Sega location went smoothly, but I had to add the launcher fix and edited the windowed and window_border to false so get around the start-up and screen resolution glitches. My MTW2/Kingdoms are retail U.S. disk versions, fully patched.
I am very happy to be back in EB-world and like the changes to the interface. As others have pointed out some of the UI text fields could use better contrast colors.
Played Sabeans nearly 60 seasons, applied the CAI patch around turn 15 and regenerated the map and the save-game loaded fine. I haven't seen to much aggression since then as most of the Eleutheroi had been cleansed from my regions, but I recently took a town in SE Africa that neighbors the Ptolemaioi, so they may come calling soon.
I alt-tab in and out a lot and haven't had any issues around that. I have had one CTD that occurred when I was looking at an enemy generals stack from the battle dialog and right-clicked on one of their units to see information on the unit type.
All-in-all this is a very impressive initial release and I will even say that it was well worth the wait.
Do you happen to know what unit it was?
I've noticed something that (I think) is new, that we can now retrain some mercenary units. That is... really nice, to be able preserve and cultivate units' gained experience.
While I'm here, I noticed something else - I took Pella as the Epirots, and I destroyed the Makedonian royal tombs so to reap an enormous amount of much-need cash. Thing is, I was expecting that that would really piss off the population, but it didn't. They seem quite happy to be ruled by iconoclastic, Adriatic "Greeks". Hm.
I've noticed something that (I think) is new, that we can now retrain some mercenary units. That is... really nice, to be able preserve and cultivate units' gained experience.
While I'm here, I noticed something else - I took Pella as the Epirots, and I destroyed the Makedonian royal tombs so to reap an enormous amount of much-need cash. Thing is, I was expecting that that would really piss off the population, but it didn't. They seem quite happy to be ruled by iconoclastic, Adriatic "Greeks". Hm.
For them to get mad we'd need a script to check whether the uniques get destroyed and then script rebellion or unhappiness. However as these buildings are currently bugged in the release and will change into different buildings when settlements are sacked. The only solution is to make them indestructible, sadly putting an end to looting.
On the positive side, the Nabataeans have some very lovely Horse Archersi ~;)
On the positive side, the Nabataeans have some very lovely Horse Archersi ~;)
Sigh. I think they need a little more work.
Sigh. I think they need a little more work.
in what way?
Ozonius Tomicus
09-01-2014, 05:22
Do you happen to know what unit it was?
Sorry, no -- for what it's worth (probably not much I know) I've only fought the Eleutheroi around the southern part of the Arabian Peninnsula, and the town of Axum in Africa. Checking unit descriptions is something that I do often especially with so many unit updates and it was so sudden I didn't even realize what happened right off.
Alcibiade
09-01-2014, 14:12
There's a placeholder for Segesta or it's a bug ? Do you need somebody to write it ?
Fabio Scevola
09-01-2014, 22:30
Hello all.
First to all thank you for this great work! You are my heroes.
Have only played initial campaigns for aedui and pritanoi on M/M and I have these comments:
Arveni initial province has not description.
Loading times are really short! was expecting 1 minute or more but my laptop takes 20-30 sec at campaign start and 10-15 sec in AI turns.
Had 2 CTD, one going first to setup a custom battle and then clicking grand campaign, the second one clicking faction simbols before starting a new campaign, both of which I had seen with Med II and other mods before.
Stonehenge is in the wrong province, should be west from current province ( according to google maps at least) :).
Battles do take long, no too much but longer than EB 1, specially sieges, I even lost a siege battle because of the timer to 15 spear retainers, having killed 1000 enemies and with 1000 soldiers of mine alive.
Some pritanoi units ( foot general bodyguards, some retainers) do not reflect their armor stats in the model, they look too unarmored.
Spearmen seem a little overpowered (as other have said)
Chariots are perfect, not overpowered tanks nor paper units, just good skirmishers and enemy lines distruptors.
Unrest is in deed low, I conquered the 2 southern brithish provinces, built the military ocupation , high taxes and only needed 2 units if one was a general (or 3 if not) to have more than 100% happiness.
Hope this will be helpful.
Also what is the recommended difficult settings?
Regards.
mikeboix
09-01-2014, 23:55
Why almost all the infantry and cavalry units have throwing spears or javelins? I think it's pretty annoying always having to use alt+click to order my infantry to melee attack :P
Did really the spearmen and falanges throw javelins on ancient wars?
Why almost all the infantry and cavalry units have throwing spears or javelins? I think it's pretty annoying always having to use alt+click to order my infantry to melee attack :P
Did really the spearmen and falanges throw javelins on ancient wars?
you exaggerate: only 80% of the units do that! :clown:
hey, hellenistic period warfare for you. I didn't make this up :laugh4:
brodinis
09-02-2014, 09:04
So Hello,
I must say i love Europa Barbarorum. I have been playing mods for total war series many years now. Fluid install for EB2 was very refreshing. But i must say that this is good for beta version( as a first release )
First off all, i played few campaigns very hard/ very hard and i can say that AI is completely dumb and unresponsive. Even rebels ( eleutheroi ) WILL NOT attack your almost undefended settlement. The AI wages war on themselves, but they DO NOT touch you. Example is my Britons campaign where i have 140 turns into the game and nobody attacks me. Even if you attack first some random faction, they DO NOT defend their settlement. My Nabateans campaign is the same 100 turns in, and no response, I attack Ptolemais and they refuse to fight me. For me seems like Rome 2 scenario at their first release. AI is very passive regarding the players side. Sure they wage war on themselves- yes. But they do not attack YOU. And if you look how germanian( sweboz ) faction reacts to the full flag surrounding settlements at their campaign start, you will obviously see that the AI is afraid to attack full flag settlements of rebels and players alike, hence if you had 1 squad of units into your settlement, they still do not attack..
When i saw the 2.7 GB download, i understood that this is far from full game(mod) release. I must say some factions and some units are more full, others may not be designed that good, for example the Baltic faction ( lugioni or so ) If you see their unit roster, you will not see much, and some units are terribly designed too, for example those skirmisher levies, they look awful compared to hellenes skirmishers. Talking about skirmishers, their use in this mod is really terrible. For spearmen you did very good job hastening or so their jav throw speed, so they loose a lot quicker. For skirmishers you did not the same thing. And for that they seem like cannon fodder. They do not loose their missiles quick enough, look at the Third age Total war mod, they made skirmishers very useful with less missiles but very good sinchronisnized and methodical throw speed with all unit models throwing at the same time.
To add more, saw some faction reform bits and pieces, but not done yet. Some unit upkeep costs not logical and so on. I hope mod will be better with time. and wish you good luck. And i love the history you written, not every province got description, but it is ok, and for ending i wanted to ask you what are your plans for next patch releases/steps? Because this game is only 50 % done in my opinion. Do not be mad at me guys, i love what you do. Just wanted to write my true opinions about the release( ofc its beta).
Have a good day ;)
P.s mod sometimes crashes to the dekstop with no reason/message. it can crash from campaign or custom battle alike.
brodinis
09-02-2014, 09:15
Wait when you conquer another culture city, you will see the real unrest. you conquered only british villages that have same culture as you, try conquering hellenes city or so ;)
joshmahurin
09-02-2014, 20:59
Also try the new campaign AI
Alcibiade
09-03-2014, 07:49
Why almost all the infantry and cavalry units have throwing spears or javelins? I think it's pretty annoying always having to use alt+click to order my infantry to melee attack :P
Did really the spearmen and falanges throw javelins on ancient wars?
If you don't like it you should consider playing in another timeframe (no offense) because yes, it was very commonly used. Especially in the western half of the map. One of the advantage was to make the schields of the opponent unusable.
But you know, most of them just throw a couple of javelins and then charge, you don't have to systematically alt-click :-) Only if you don't want them to theriow anything.
Hello again. I just wanted to say the economy seems to be a lot easier to manage than it was in EB1. It may be my memory playing tricks as it has been a few years since I have played it but I did like it to be harder to raise funds.
Did anyone else think that or is it just me? Also the CAI, which I know is still in development as is everything else, could be more aggressive to me.
Thanks
Noticed another great touch: I'm playing as Epiros, and defending one of my northern cities with an almost-all-Illyrian army of levies, and I get Barbarian battle music instead of Greek. It's the little things like this... (I love the Barbarian and Roman battle musics which sound like actual battle music, not so much the Greek which sounds more like a soundtrack.)
Friendly Sword
09-03-2014, 14:58
I just want to share a small anecdote. I have been playing as Pontos on M/M and am seventy turns in with my only inter-faction wars being two brief quarrels with KH and Pergamon. I have thus spent 90% of the game militarily interacting with the eleutheroi of northern Anatolia and I am *still* having a blast.
Note: part of the reason for this is that I am expanding to former Seleukid territories that have rebelled. What a familiar tale. ^^
10 turns into Bosporan campaign (H/H, new CAI v2). Had fun battles. Enjoyed my liminal position. Got a couple of cities. Diplomated a bit. Learned a bit of history. Started feeling the vibe of the faction. It's awesome. Look forwards to many more turns.
As an EB 1 vet, the little settlement fort things are a wonderful idea, allowing you to keep a standing army while mobilising properly is still dead expensive. The individual province descriptions are also a thing of beauty. The rest I will comment on when more informed.
в модефикации eb 1 у фалангистов были мечи а в eb 2 их нет почему?
потому что в M2TW когда фаланги с мечами трогают врага, они уронят пики.
Простите, что я плохо говорю по-русски.
GenosseGeneral
09-03-2014, 23:23
So I could spend my first couple of hours with EB2 today and can now provide my first impressions :bow:
I started a brief campaign as Ptolemaioi on H/M, I am not sure whether I was using the new AI or not since I had briefly started a game before installing it, but without deleting the map.rwm in between. I also installed one of the quicker battle submods, for increased lethality. I have played now a bit more than 40 turns in a mildly aggressive playing style, conquering Damaskos and now heading for a campaign to capture Sardis.
Since the 2 posts above were about Phalangitai, I will start my comment with them. They have certainly changed a lot, in my eyes it is a major improvement over EB1.2 that the phalanx is not the static square anymore it used to be. Instead, the formation can bend, be disrupted etc... I really like, how the EB team has managed to overcome the aweful performance of the original MTW2 pikemen. However, this came at a price as they lack the dagger. Even in EB1.2 Phalangitai were not exactly effective when fighting on walls or in closed quarters, but the sheer numbers, good morale, high pushing power and decent armour of Pezhetairoi/Klerouchoi Phalangitai meant that they could at least be of some use in sieges. In EB2, there seems to be only one use for pikemen: Being the anvil in pitched battles. Thanks to their formation, they take little causualties, but they do not cause any amongst their enemies in turn. In fact, I felt like someone had taken the points from their sarrisae, as I watched two units of Phalangitai fight each other for about 20 mins (on 6x speed!) on the city square of damaskos. Another unit was unable to take out the enemy general, I had to throw my own general's BG cav into the fight in order to finally kill theirs. But I guess this is something that I can easily fix myself, by changing some stats.
Another thing I have noticed, is the somewhat lower overall level of morale, compared to EB1.2. It is not as low as in MTW2 vanilla, but I have never seen a Hoplite unit routing from a fight on walls after taking little more than 50 per cent causualties, not being encircled, while they actually won the fight. Again, something that can easily be tweaked by changing the stat files.
What also caused trouble for me was the enhanced graphics mod, as it caused the loading times to become endless, despite switching it off in menu and campaign map as recommended. In battle, it just blurred my view. I guess I will have to give another try after reading a bit more about recommended settings and see whether it still causes hobbles my game experience.
I love the new culture system, since it gives way more flexibility and choices when it comes to empire building. Especially playing as the Ptollies, I can literally feel how important the degree of hellenisation was for the Eastern successors since only hellenised provinces can be developed and only hellen colonists can provide me the loyal troops my kingdom needs. I think this system really overcomes the somewhat static system of EB1, in which for instance the Ptolemies were never able to raise Hetairoi in Antiocheia (unless capturing the city with a developed MIC), simply because it was only a type 2 region, regardless whether it was under their control. I hope this also somewhat fixes the yellow fever/silver death, since the 2 cannot anymore spam Klerouchoi phalangitai from every single city under their control. Instead of just building one rather abstract building, the player now truly has to develop his provinces, with certain governments requiring certain civic structures and cultures. That adds a lot of immersion to the game and it is a great mechanism, especially since the "empire building" of EB1.2 was always a bit less developed than I would have liked it to be. Great job, really a MAJOR improvement! :2thumbsup:
Also, the PSFs add to the same effect: In peacetime, the army can disperse and the the klerouchoi can work at their estates. When the king wishes to campaign, he has to gather them first - and pay, since it is not cheap to keep an army in the field! Another detail which illustrates how much thought has gone into the recruitment/army management system of this mod are the increased number of recruitment slots in winter season. All in all, I think EB2 does a great job in that section!
As announced, one thing that is lacking yet is the enormous number of regional and factional units one could raise in EB1.2. That system will possibly even more profit from the new culture system... after all, one can only raise Parthian archers if there are Parthians to recruit!
After all, this unfinished mod done by enthusiasts seems to be more finished on many aspects than many "finished games" thrown onto the market for 50+ euros at release, then delivering the lacking units etc. as DLCs. :bow:
PS: After reading the whole text I just wrote, it sounds a bit harsh to me, since it contains so much criticism... but I know you guys have been working hard on this and this can be seen in every detail of the game! :2thumbsup:
PSS: Wow, that is a long text. I hope someone reads it to the end :D
Another thing I have noticed, is the somewhat lower overall level of morale, compared to EB1.2. It is not as low as in MTW2 vanilla, but I have never seen a Hoplite unit routing from a fight on walls after taking little more than 50 per cent causualties see my comment , not being encircled, while they actually won the fight. Again, something that can easily be tweaked by changing the stat files.
just for the record: Hoplites =/= Japanese soldiers from WW2. 50% casualties is pretty high by any standard. yes, this was on purpose.
Though I do see a reason to change the battle_config, as well as some other stats.
Nightshift
09-04-2014, 08:19
Hi there, first of all thanks for the release! I was really surprised by it. Been waiting for years and when I saw the twitter post I was so grateful.. started downloading, reinstalled M2TW and everything worked from the start. Installed the new CAI right away. First campaign was Sweboz but after 15-20 turns I had ctd after allmost every turn. Can't possibly tell the reason for it yet. After that I started campaigns for some of my other favourites but only to have a look at their starting positions and troops. Now I restarted a new Sweboz campaign but so far only until turn 8 or so..
Disbanding my horse troops right away helped alot to get out of the red. I have to say I like the pace of the battles alot. Any spear units fighting against each other wrestle for inches of ground with very low casualties. When they tire out and some unit is avaiable like archers or skirmishers that have no more ammo they fall into their sides or back. Sometimes thats just enough to break enemy morale and when they start to run you have to decide to either follow them and kill as much of them in the process until they are driven off the map or have your units help with the rest of the battle. If you leave them running they will come back but you can deal with them with your troops beeing more coherent. I think this is a good representation of warfare at that time where its about breaking the enemy formations rather than killing them all off (Hannibals deeds where exceptional thats why the became historical).
Since I started that campaign twice and attacked the same settlement twice (just south of my starting position) I can say the following:
(With battle timer enabled) The first time I had much higher casualties really pushing into the settlement which I have to say was not stupidly defended by AI. The second time I was much more hesitant trying to use every advantage of having multiple units going against the enemy and have those involved before letting rest. Casualties were much lower (still 50%) but time was running out and just seconds before the time was out the last of them was killed. Very exciting!!
Bowmen could use just a bit more ammo for my taste and javelins could do a bit more killing at least from the back. Havent tried the slinger units yet but I guess they should be more usefull than bowman at that timeframe (except specialists like kretan bowman).
I am very happy having now two new and interesting neighbors in vicinity so sweboz is not as lonely now. Haven't found the family tree yet, maybe because I didn't play for a long time but could imagine it's a design choice. Loved the news that my faction leader gained authority (wich was almost nil at the start) just because he was holding onto power for an amount of time which is not easy within those tribes :). Great roleplaying little thingies! The tribal system in general is great! Noticed that my faction leader has all kinds of good battle traits but still had zero star ranking.. although that was in my first camaign have to check that out again. But I like that characters from tribes that are more administrative do better as gouvernors..
Looked like those guys in southeren arabian peninsula can build ships now - big improvement!! They could use some more units though I hope thats work in progress or just because they need some builings..
Oh well I have to play a lot more before writing here I guess-sorry for the long text full of assumptions.
Again thanks for the nice work. Thanks for developers and all the people in the forums who contributet with knowledge and pics and so on for example at the wonders project. All those years of waiting were not wasted-not at all. I'm looking forward for the mod beeing fleshed out.
I don't need to read more history - I'm playing EB again!!
P.S. In battle I once noticed a guy beeing midget sized dancing around for a couple minutes should I see that again I'll screenshot him..
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ok after another session I realized why there is no family tree for sweboz and most likely for some other factions.-->Ok next time I'll read bug forum first :) -->and will try windowed mode now instead..
Getting more interesting with every turn now :)
Shadowwalker
09-05-2014, 05:46
I've started a couple campaigns (Rome, Boii, Brits) and more or less given up on all of them because I can't give anyone that's not my faction leader an army. They always end up defecting if they're away from a city for more than a turn or two. There seems to be no way to raise loyalty and I've never seen a family member that had more than 4 loyalty ring thingys.
Meanwhile I've seen multiple AI family members with mostly full ranks in every stat.
I have found that with the "Positive Traits" submod by Goth the situation improves quite a bit - but for certain factions only.
As the Romans for example I have never had a Praetor/Propraetor/Consul/Proconsul defecting anymore, since all of them have at least 5 points of loyalty. If I move armies around I always assign a family member who is at least Praetor. And the armies who are out to conquer usually stay 5 turns + outside cities because I always starve out garrisons. I simply can't storm cities due to the new combat system and the better BAI. :embarassed:)
I didn't play a prolonged campaign with them yet, though (just unified Italy from Rhegion to Medilanon, turn 82), so maybe it's different in later stages.
With the Aedui on the other hand I can have only one army in the field, and it has to be led by the faction leader. I have about 20 family members in that campaign, plenty of them had 4, 5 or even 6 points of loyalty when they were adopted. But within a few years they all drop down to one or at best 2 points. And none of them gave me a hint about why it happens. Maybe I'm just blind, but I read their trait descriptions (the usually have 0 or 1 ancillary only, so not that much to read in that part, hehe) several times and didn't find anything that would explain that. So I'm as clueless as probably everyone else about it. The traits and ancillary files didn't enlighten me either. ~:confused:
The campaigns are still very playable, though (and fun, especially with the Aedui I had recently a lot of fun unifying Gaul, just because their units are so beautiful). They're just slow. Which is not a bad thing in any case. If anything I'd just like to see the possibility to have a few more commanders with a bit of loyalty, so that I can have field armies defending my borders (Ilibarri/Tolosa/Massalia/Medilanon and the Rhine). At the moment I have to put a full stack in each of the border cities to defend against the bloody Qart-Hadashtim which continue to attack Massalia and Tolosa and the Boii who attack the provinces just north of the Alps.
Having large walls (awesome sight by the way!) doesn't help as much as I hoped since the range of celtic slingers and archers has been cut down so severly (and the damage they deal, as well, although I already raised the hit rates to 0.30, don't want to go higher because the casualties started to really grow already with this change).
I'm pondering about giving the celtic slingers their EB I range of 160+ again (since other slingers got a way better range too, compared to EB i - Shepherd Slingers and Balearic Slingers have 190 for example).
I would also like to ask if there really is no possibility anymore to raise faction and regional troops at the same time in a given province anymore. As the Aedui I can build either the Confederation chain (or better, that government is available in all of Gaul and most of Britain right from the moment I conquer the settlement) or the "Allied" chain. And therefore I either have the complete Aedui factional roster available or (in Massalai for example) hellenic troops. I miss the often mentioned new government complex options, as it stands I am able to build a gov I or a gov III (speaking in EB I terms) in any given city, and that's it. I can't help the feeling to simply play the whole "government" part of the game wrong. :no:
Related to that: I suppose that the availability of regional troops will be reconsidered for all factions once there are more units available?
At the moment every faction has the same regional troops in any given province as far as I saw, and that feels a bit odd. Understandable of course, given the number of missing units, but still a bit . . . well, odd. ~;)
Unrelated: Settlements grow much too fast still for my liking. In the mentioned Aedui Campaign (turn ~170) Gergovia, Bibracte, Massalia, Uiennos and Uesontio already have the largest walls and are nearing the last construcable building.
[Hm, I shouldn't have started writing this before I have to leave to work . . . a longer, more detailed post will be added once I get home again. ~;) ]
Mithridates
09-06-2014, 18:09
Spent a few hours playing various campaigns (Kart Hadast, Pergamon, Takshishilia) and a few things jumped out at me:
First the problems:
1) something is up with unit stats. I'm not sure if the numbers mean nothing or if they mean more or less what they meant in EB I, but they're off. For instance, the charge bonus on the Akkadian Infantry (mercenaries) is about 30, while for most cavalry units it's under 10.
2) archers and javelins are more or less useless now. In EB I they were a mainstay of my army, usually about 1/4 to 1/2 of the army (esp against lightly armored troops). In EB II, my archers can't even kill half a dozen unarmored enemies before running out of arrows.
3) lethality is a bit low. I like realism as much as the next person, but 90 minute battles are a bit much. I know there is a mod for that, but I don't know where to find the mod files (not mod savvy)
4) trade by sea seems significantly nerfed. Trade in general seems nerfed. My poor Kart Hadast campaign saw me with 1-2 units in each city and one half stack army barely pulling in 5000 mnai per turn while having trade agreements all over the place. In EB I, I would be pulling in 10-20k and have a nice economy going by turn 50-75.
5) Peragmon seems overpowered for its size. I was able to take almost all of anatolia within 75 turns and my revenues are between 10-30k per turn depending on how many armies I have going. That's the kind of economy Kart Hadast should have given its historical significance and position.
6) the AI is either too timid (the Seleucids and Egyptians let me take their cities in anatolia without a single counter-attack) or too hell-bent insane on destroying you (the Lustoann and new celtiberian faction for Kart-Hadast). I'm not sure if there's a way to rebalance this or if it's just hard-coded.
7) Diplomacy is still awful although people do actually ally with me. I'm thinking diplomacy is hardcoded and that's why we get the forced diplomacy mini-mod.
8) the cultures thing is confusing and so is the government types. I'm not sure what each will allow you to do (i.e. oligarchy vs. democracy) in terms of development of a city (unit recruitment seems fairly straightforward).
9) character traits are nerfy. My top general gets 2 stars after winning every single battle then gets fat and lazy and loses them five turns down the line. Again, I know there's a mod for this, but I wouldn't even know where to find the file to edit for this.
Now the good stuff:
All that aside, the mod is awesome.
For being the beta release, it's very polished.
Seems that a lot of the descriptions could be dropped from EB I directly into EB II, if that's possible.
The Indus cities look incredible and I'm very happy to see that elephants are actual tanks now as opposed to being death fodder and backfiring like in EB I.
The mining, industry, and farming income almost makes up for the nerfed trade if you can focus on those areas.
Not sure what the small towns are supposed to do (or if it's not implemented), but having static forts in territory adds some strategic depth as the AI likes to hole up in them after I take their cities.
The scripting for the Mauryan empire's punishment was brutal, but awesome. The only thing is that the stacks were way off in the Himalayas and striking at nothing then suddenly (with the same strike animation) attacking my cities. I was hosed since my army was in the field trying to engage the stacks in the alps.
All the new factions look very interesting and I'm looking forward to trying them out. I especially like the Bosphoran kingdom and Maessylia (though I imagine having to fight Kart Hadast with mostly skirmishers will be awful given their low kill ratio).
Thanks for the awesome mod. And thanks for EB I. I've logged more hours on that game than probably any five other games in my life combined.
1) something is up with unit stats. I'm not sure if the numbers mean nothing or if they mean more or less what they meant in EB I, but they're off. For instance, the charge bonus on the Akkadian Infantry (mercenaries) is about 30, while for most cavalry units it's under 10.
the low charge bonus for some cavalry has to do with the way they use their spears (and it should be ~11, not under 10: add it to the attack, and you get the total charge). other cavalry have the higher charge bonus, and on top of that the ap and power_charge attribute.
as to the akkadians: that is on purpose, and you'll find it with almost every hoplite style army (I suspect you'll realize the intent there). might have to lower though if it proves too strong. let me know: This is still in the testing stage, and I do have a backup value in case it is too high (in this case, around 11).
2) archers and javelins are more or less useless now. In EB I they were a mainstay of my army, usually about 1/4 to 1/2 of the army (esp against lightly armored troops). In EB II, my archers can't even kill half a dozen unarmored enemies before running out of arrows.
3) lethality is a bit low. I like realism as much as the next person, but 90 minute battles are a bit much. I know there is a mod for that, but I don't know where to find the mod files (not mod savvy)
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?147967-Faster-Battles-%28temporary-submod-for-EB-2-0-0%29
yeah, I agree: it might have worked a bit too well in this department on the original settings :clown:
Kολοσσός
09-08-2014, 04:46
Love the game but it's highly unstable on my current rig. Will not play until patched. Strategic map is stable, but trying to enter a real time battle mode causes crashes to the desktop. The crash rate is like 50%, if not worse...
The crash rate is like 50%, if not worse...
Not for me.
Gneisenau
09-08-2014, 17:15
hello to all .. due to work commitments, and sea, I have not had much time to play and I have not written just my opinion ...
your work was superb, extreme care in details, beautiful unit, beautiful animation, and it's really convincing way in which the new factions have integrated the balance of the campaign! one of the things that surprised me most was how the fact that the minor settlements provide 1 free upkeep unit, has revolutionized their strategic utility and roleplayng in the game
I played the first version of vanilla, 100 turns with saba, vh / vh,
then 80 turns with Pergamon, vh / vh, with the second version of the CAI, faster battles, and positive characters.
now I'm playing a Roman campaign, using the AI piter, the BAI, positive characters, fastest battle, but I've only played a few turns and a few battles.
# I will speak only of the campaign with Pergamon (the saba was less convincing)
do not take it as a wild critical to your work, but as a starting point to improve a game that I love, but I would love more;)
here's what I do not like:
1) economic management too easy
2) battles too easy (in clashes at par my losses are about one tenth of those of the enemy)
3) system of agents unnerving (for spies is impossible to enter enemy cities, and each round had to cope with two assassins attempts against my FM, from ptolemaics) edit. and each turn i kill the 2 assassins with mine!
4) enemy factions too passive
5) some units have an upkeep cost too high in relation to their effectiveness
6) morale too low
i also hope in future, in a chavalry charge a little more effective!!!
sorry for my english
PS no encountered ctd!
edit: i suggest, for increase the difficult and the realism (simulating the high cost of a war campaign), one script like in bellum crucis, that generate an another special upkeep cost for each army in enemy territory (600 mnai/turn), and one special upkeep for each army sieging (2000mnai/turn)
joshmahurin
09-08-2014, 18:18
Love the game but it's highly unstable on my current rig. Will not play until patched. Strategic map is stable, but trying to enter a real time battle mode causes crashes to the desktop. The crash rate is like 50%, if not worse...
This is not usual for most people, you should open a thread in the bug reports section so that we can try to help you figure out what is wrong. For your initial post I would try to make it crash again and then paste your log file into the post (your log file being in C:\(wherever you installed M2TW)\mods\EBII\logs\log.txt
I like that you have not changed too many things, you have simply added more (even if the game is incomplete with reforms and other bells and whistles). You have fully captured the essence of the original game. I have only played about 100 turns with the British faction, I wanted to watch the AI unhindered by human distractions.
Here are some of my observations:
Benefactors always start off starving.
Even without a family tree, I do wish I could select/change faction heir at my leisure.
I do not think disbanding my armies puts them back in the population of the cities (this may be a me2 thing though)
Early British armies are very weak and population growth is slow. I am assuming I will get better troops at some point but it may take a while, and while this may stop me from unrealistically conquering an empire easily, I fear that AI controlled Briton will be easy to steamroll with a mainland army be it whatever faction (I have spied most of the worlds armies and they are all vastly superior thus far).
Many diplomats conglomerate at the English channel and walk back and forth as though they are trying to figure out how to get to Briton.
Briton seems to be missing one or two cities. Eremos is the region in south Ireland and also the uppermost part of the Briton and I can find no cities in either province with that name (I found only one city in Ireland).
Hayasdan makes more of an attempt to expand their homelands and expand south, unlike eb1 where they blitz north.
There are ample naval invasions. Carthage has made two into Spain but both times could not pull off long term occupation. Rome has set up a base of operation in Thermon. Saba invaded Axum. I wonder too, if someday someone decides to invade the little paradise up north.
I am hoping, if it is possible, we can see a return of the Isle of Darkness training. Also, most of the unique buildings in Briton offer no bonuses (at least not in description). I would also love to see the return of unique troops for Ireland and the various regions of Briton.
I am still getting used to ME2 battles. I think the troops sometimes respond slowly and the battles are very long. I have appreciated the faster battles mod. Also (and this is more of an ME2 problem) I am sad I may have to bring back the ugly green arrows for in rtw games your troops still light up when you select them and here they do not making it difficult to understand what is going on, especially at the center of town.
I love that every province has a write up.
I am still ignorant of all the nuances of recruiting but I feel like there will be less spamming and perhaps a deeper campaign can be enjoyed.
I am watching Rome's legions and while I still see some armies of randomly selected troops, I am seeing a decent amount of armies that, to some degree, can pass as a roman legion (this may be to the different recruitment system which I am thinking may be superior). Same goes for Makedonia and Epeiros whom both (along with Rome) were guilty of putting up some very unrealistic/historically inaccurate armies in EB1. This should lead to better battles.
I have only had one CTD and that was on the faction screen menu. I had my game freeze once during end turn, I went back one turn, it happened again, then I went back a few more turns and it did not happen again. The only other times I had problems with when I alt/tab (windowed mode does not always seem to work).
It would have been easy for me to be disappointed as I was never a big fan of ME2 (always felt like a clunky version of rtw with better graphics) and my excitement of this release has somewhat subsided the last few years. I am not disappointed. Thanks.
So now I am wondering if you have worked out a preliminary release date for EB3? I hear Khelvan is currently dismantling Rome 2 as we speak. Just kidding.
Mithridates VI Eupator
09-09-2014, 09:59
The Eremos region is a "wasteland" region that incorporates parts of the map that are either uninhabited/very sparsely populated, ungovernable, or of very Little importance during our timeframe. Thus, apart from parts of Ireland and Caledonia, this also includes the Arabian and Saharan deserts, the Horn of Africa and Finland/Scandinavian inland. The capital of the province is Therazza, which is imposible to reach, and located deep in the Saharan desert.
The crash on the faction selection screen is a known M2TW bug, that occur in most mods that have many factions and a dynamic map on the faction selection screen. It occurs if one clicks too many faction Icons in one session. It can be avoided by going back to the main menue within regular intervals in looking at the factions. This bug should really be in the "known bugs" section, Kull, if it is not already there, due to its pervasive nature.
So now I am wondering if you have worked out a preliminary release date for EB3? I hear Khelvan is currently dismantling Rome 2 as we speak. Just kidding.
:stare:
The crash on the faction selection screen is a known M2TW bug, that occur in most mods that have many factions and a dynamic map on the faction selection screen. It occurs if one clicks too many faction Icons in one session. It can be avoided by going back to the main menue within regular intervals in looking at the factions. This bug should really be in the "known bugs" section, Kull, if it is not already there, due to its pervasive nature.
Item #14. Added it yesterday! :2thumbsup:
I would have posted my impressions of EB2 earlier, but I've only just gotten around to finally playing the beloved mod I waited so long for. Let me start by offering my thanks and congratulations to the EB2 team for their fantastic work. EB was, for me, was one of those few gaming experience that actually shaped me as a person growing up. Thanks to EB I acquired my taste for the wonderful world of history - a hobby and passion that has enriched more than just my vacations; it gives me unique perspective on modern life that most people don't experience. EB2 shows amazing promise to be just as brilliant as its prequel. In this post I'll limit my feedback to ONLY the stuff that I feel I've tested/played enough in order to critique, which is mostly the battles on the battle map. Alright, on to the game!
version:
- current EB2 release
- graphics enhancement mod installed
- improved CAI
- improved BAI
The first part of the gameplay I noticed was the slow pacing. I love this for the simple fact that it gives the player time to devise and execute thought-through tactical manoeuvres, instead of the manic 3 minute victories of vanilla M2TW. The pacing makes it much more enjoyable to play in generalcam, which has been my preferred way of playing EB2 so far. In depth tactical decision making, maximum immersion, nail biting 45 minute long battles. Many people are calling out to speed up the killrate. In this post I'd like to come out as a SUPPORTER of the current battle pacing, due to the reasons listed in this paragraph. Please don't speed it up (too much)!
In the graphics department, all I can say is gosh, wow! My jaw dropped to the floor when I first laid eyes on the beautiful units and buildings. The graphics really make the battles come alive, they suck you in to the gameplay experience and make you forget that you're playing a computer game. Whoever designed these models and textures really did a fantastic job.
About the AI: I'm an enthusiastic role-player when it comes to Total War games. I always try my hardest to avoid gamey techniques that maximize the kill/death ratio and play silly tricks on the AI. The battle AI seems to have gotten a lot harder to outsmart compared to vanilla M2TW and RTW. It uses good formations, logically defends walls and generally doesn't bug out as much. Realistic enemy behaviour makes it a lot easier to get a good roleplay going.
The AI behaviour of the units themselves seems to be bugged, however. The unit behaviour of skirmishers and cavalry is plagued by some very annoying quirks. Skirmishers often refuse to throw their javelins, and require constant player intervention to 'correct' buggy behaviour. Also, horsemen charges look awful: when charging an enemy, the whole unit suddenly stops in its tracks right when it reaches the enemy line instead of penetrating a couple of ranks. This behaviour was part of the original game but seems to have gotten worse in EB2.
And lastly, I'd like to say something about balance. Allow me to state that I am NOT one of those 'eternal complainers' who constantly complain on the internet about units being too weak/overpowered. I never blame the video game when I lose. Developers think very consciously about the roles each unit is designed to fill, and certain units being stronger than others is just part of their vision of how they see their own game. I try to respect that and play the game how the devs meant for it to be played. I know that good balancing is always hard to achieve on first release. But in this game, skirmishers and horse archers are so weak as to be entirely useless on the battlefield. Tactically relying on skirmishers is impossible because their arrows/bullets/javelins simply don't cause enough damage to the enemy. I sincerely hope future releases will take care of this imbalance. Please keep in mind that it doesn't come easy for me to complain about stuff 'being OP/nerfed' on the internet; this is literally the first time in my life I've ever complained about stuff like this in a forum post.
In closing, thanks again for the wonderful work on this mod. It has all the promise to have all the qualities EB had and more, not least being the amazing graphics and improved AI. I haven't had the timer to really get into the strategic campaign side of things, but it's definitely on the menu. Also, this is just down to me and my PC setup but EB2 seems much more stable now than EB1 ever was. Don't even have to wait 30 seconds after a battle to go back to the campaign map, which is GREAT! The only issue I've had was the shared.txt bug, which was easily solved.
Candiano
09-09-2014, 23:02
This is just amazing. What a good job !! It's simply great and I must confess that I switched from Rome II to EB II without any regret at all. I'm using the disc installation (Steam sucks) and it's working fine and fast except that I have to use Kingdoms. The system refuses MTWII. Not a big deal. I'm playing a campaign for a day now and it works perfectly. However it's impossible to play the tutorial. The screen freezes. And also, giving One Point experience to ships equipped with canons might not be a good idea :-)
Again, congratulations and thank you
Glad to hear that you are enjoying EB2.
Docus: there is a partial fix for the skirmisher problems. You can find it in this thread (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?147953-possible-bug-reg-Pritanoi-skirmishers-in-campaign).
Candiano: actually, there is no tutorial. The team just forgot to remove the tutorial from the menu, hence the crash :shrug: . And what do you mean with "ships with canons"?
Nightshift
09-10-2014, 11:27
Me again. Installed on a much older PC but WinXP and had not a single crash now in my Sweboz campaign after 150 turns. Even Alt-Tabbing diddn't cause much problems (in fullscreen) except ones when pics and colors got messed up. Took me almost 100 turns to understand the camp vs town thing not because I didn't read in game texts but because I thought of them beeing placeholders, the nomad buildings I mean.
After that I could imagine how my tribal society was settling and transforming, but before I guess I was irritated by descriptions like for caravan routes which were depicting steppe plains. Thats why I thought they were more like beeing missplaced. Hope this makes sense?!
I was a bit afraid after conquering what I would call my good starting position, because I thought the campaign could become too easy. But when I realised what needed to be done and build for a good economy I thought of raiding some towns for money. So I send out spys to get a better idea of what was going on around me. Well from that point on I was kind of overwhelmed with everything going on and didn't know what to do first - which is the best thing ever happened to me in a TW-game.
The Boii capital I wanted to raid was allready taken by my Lugioni allies, Roman armys were allready patrolling north of the alps, the gallo-celtics were closing in on my western border.. I had slept in my dark forests for too long.
Turned my raiding party to the last very big settlement controlled by rebells which bribed them away from me after a short siege. (Its now a stronghold defended by 2 full army stacks and samller patrols good buffer though )
Build another one to raid Britain wich was cut off after landing there by a pirate fleet. Now british troops are coming after me with their gallic allies, familly members are beeing assasinated, a plague decimated half of my capitals population and every turn I have to carefully think about wether to raise more troops or finally transform that gouvernment so that I don't need to be afraid of rebellions in my backyard..
Ok before this turns into an AAR, just wanted to tell how much I like it. Again pace of battle is just right for me except lethality for javelins and archers, wich makes some of the factions unplayable for me like: Numidieans, Sauromatae and Saka and Saaba so every faction that relies heavily on them. (don't have too much problems with skirmishers not throwing spears-just that they don't kill anything)
Again thx so much for this gem, looking forward for first patch allready ;) keep up the good work!
I'm using the more aggressive campaign AI, the skirmisher fix and a custom kill ratio (the middle ground between the unofficial fix and the mod's vanilla settings) and I'm enjoying the mod immensely. It's surprisingly stable for the first release - I've had no CTDs during the first ~55 turns in my Romani game so far. The mod is also very immersive, just as EBI was. The AI is better than in RTW, but obviously it needs some work and I'm sure that it will become better in the future.
Some battle balancing is needed, too. With the kill ratio change and the skirmisher fix the projectiles are ok-ish, but cavalry charges are extremely weak in terms of casualties they inflict, even when the enemy is charged from behind. The morale effect is just right, though :). The elephant units needs a buff, too. It's good that they are easy to kill by skirmishers, but they just don't have enough of a punch when they trample the soldiers, which shouldn't be the case. Also, while I'm glad that the phalangites are no longer invulnerable when they are attacked from the front, I think that the damage they inflict is too low.
I autocalc most sieges, because IMO they take too much time, involve annoying pathfinding issues and are rather boring, but it's typical for TW games, so nothing new here and not really the mod's fault. The good thing about this is that the game becomes a bit more challenging, because the casualties are usually higher in the autocalced battles than in the manually played ones, although sometimes I use the auto_win command when the garrison is pathetically weak and the outcome is a foregone conclusion.
The mod was well worth the wait :). Cheers.
EDIT: BTW, I think that the number of movement points on the campaign map should be a little bit higher. It takes too long to move units and leaders around, which is both annoying and unrealistic, considering that 1 turn is 3 months. I understand that fully accurate values could be very unbalancing due to the turn-based nature of the game and the AI's response time, but still, current values are too low IMO.
Nightshift
09-10-2014, 12:24
Could you please explain where to change kill ratio if possible for javelins and arrows because I could only find accuracy and range numbers, it's the first time I'm actually looking into these files.
___________________________________________________________________________________________
Ok took a look into the descr_projectile and a tutorial I found: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?468257-A-Guide-on-the-Descr_Projectile-txt
What I dont understand is why there are two values for accuracy:
;accuracy_vs_units 0.035
accuracy_vs_units 0.09
and wich value actually increases kill ratio? Also how are things regarding beeing shot in the back or beeing hit from right side as opposed to left side if target yields a shield?
If someone could provide a quick fix for arrows and javelins I'd appreciate a lot!
P.s. Are there certain special archer units that have composite bows - I mean not really but coresponding to this file just have better bows? And how does it relate to the ingame description of missile attack beeing 2 or 3?
I changed the same file which was changed here - https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?147967-Faster-Battles-%28temporary-submod-for-EB-2-0-0%29 . I'm using 0.29 for melee and 0.33 for missiles.
Nightshift
09-10-2014, 13:41
Great thx alot will try changing missiles only as I like melee the way it is. I suppose javelins and arrows are handled both under missiles here.
Totally different question: Would it be possible to delay the question for a backup heir for a couple or at least one turn? As I dont know right at the start wich would be the best candidate (usually better traits go along a higher age and other factors).
Anyway thx for the battle_config solution! Will try around a bit and start a new campaign with one of the factions I had to neglect before!
P.S. Do you have the 0.33 value for infantry, cavalry and elephants or are you using different values for each?
I'm using 0.4 for elephants, because they have a higher value in the vanilla version of the mod, too, so I guess there is a reason for that.
Candiano
09-10-2014, 18:17
Well about ships; I'm now playing Epeiros. I just conquered Thermon. I must chose between "Allied Democratic State" and "Allied Oligarchic State" When you right clic on one of the two options you open a window explaining the difference between the two solutions. It says (ao) quote Experience bonus for ships with cannons recruited : +1 unquote. :stare:
By the way, I switched to Epeiros because I've been stopped in my Romani campaign that refuses to open either of the saves I made : not from quick save, not from a save with a name I gave, not from the automatic save. Has this bug been reported to you yet ?
Anyway : great game that will improve with time. Regards
It says (ao) quote Experience bonus for ships with cannons recruited : +1 unquote.
Well just wait a "few" hundred years :book2:
not from a save with a name I gave, not from the automatic save. Has this bug been reported to you yet ?
Never had that.
A couple weird things I've noticed is pirate ships spawning I'm very small lakes causing storms that last for many turns. Lost a faction leader to it.
As Pontus I get a lot of births and adoptions for leaders but as Pergamum I barely got any and those I did get had a lot lower loyalty.
As Pontus when one of of family members died and made the province of Sophene or Gazaka ai controlled the ai was able to build a military colony allowing the recruiting of Greek units in both. I am sure that option wasn't there when I had a family member in it. WAD?
Also the Pontus faction leader has the VC trait even if I am playing a short campaign.
Smoke=fire
09-30-2014, 11:46
My excitement at seeing that this was actually out is still at max. I can not help but smile every time I glance at the EB2 icon on my desktop. As far as gameplay goes, I've been reading far to much, and have only made it about twenty turns in. I did notice the trait and javelin issues, but they have already been reported and I have nothing else to add. Except a "well done" and an emphatic "thank you".
Mouthwash1
10-05-2014, 02:17
Why are the factions colored uniformly on the minimap? It looks horrific. EB1 showed you the topography of the map, and it came out looking totally natural.
Gaius Sempronius Gracchus
10-05-2014, 14:21
Oddly..I was just thinking how much I like the 'washed out' colour scheme of the minimap with fow on.
Mouthwash1
10-09-2014, 13:00
Is there any way to mod this in myself?
My excitement at seeing that this was actually out is still at max. I can not help but smile every time I glance at the EB2 icon on my desktop. Same here! :laugh4:
I did notice the trait and javelin issues, but they have already been reported and I have nothing else to add. Except a "well done" and an emphatic "thank you". There's an unofficial fix for the javelins, also cav and spears at the twcenter, courtesy of QuintusSertorius.
EDIT:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?668906-Unofficial-Hotfix-Functional-infantry-and-cavalry-javelineers-improved-secondary-weapon-spearmen-and-faster-cavalry&p=14136914&viewfull=1#post14136914
EDIT2: Hadn't seen it, it's here as well!
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?148305-Unofficial-Hotfix-Functional-inf-cav-javelineers-improved-spearmen-faster-cavalry&p=2053619610&viewfull=1#post2053619610
V.T. Marvin
10-19-2014, 17:12
And an official fix for most annoying trait issues : https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?148189-HOTFIX-several-correction-to-broken-trait-mechanics.:yes:
Smoke=fire
10-20-2014, 00:20
That you.
Nylonbeast
10-21-2014, 01:52
I have been playing this for two days now, and I have to say I love it. I was about to go back to SS but kinda stumbled upon EB2 without any kind of expectations and decided to install that instead.
1) At first the battles seemed sluggish, but it turns out that it actually feels better this way... M2TW and even SS are more dynamic, fast and "gamey" I guess, where as this feels more realistic (even with combat making casualties more slowly and cav charges being more balanced). I like the idea of battles being more about morale than bloodletting, which seems to be the case in EB2.
2) Routers cannot be picked off as easily, which seems to shift the focus of battles somewhat from dominating the field with cavalry into this careful forming and reforming of lines and not chasing after carelessly.
3) The javelins don't seem to work on offense as well as in f.ex. SS, but again I feel that this is just causing me to play the game in a different manner. The only annoying thing about this at the moment is when a unit gets stuck on "reload" and cannot properly defend itself in melee.
4) I love the walls of text and the depth in which everything is described. Hopefully a future version has every description in it's place.
5) Graphics are great, although sometimes the battle animations are a bit glitchy. I don't mind. The only real visual problem ATM (at least with the Ardui) is that sometimes agents and settlements are hard to see from other terrain on the campaign map (during the green seasons).
6) The most important thing: This is the first time in a few years that I've played a game that has made me go "just... one... more... turn" after playing for over 12h. This mod is brilliant!
Decent_Greek
10-21-2014, 10:18
sorry i didnt know where to post,
when this mod will be complete and out of beta?
sorry i didnt know where to post,
when this mod will be complete and out of beta?
Unfortunately that is a question we cannot answer s we do not know ourselves. I know it is not a satisfactory response, but when you are dealing with a team composed entirely of volunteers who communicate almost exclusively via the internet, you cannot make any certified commitments.
QuintusSertorius
10-21-2014, 10:45
2) Routers cannot be picked off as easily, which seems to shift the focus of battles somewhat from dominating the field with cavalry into this careful forming and reforming of lines and not chasing after carelessly.
3) The javelins don't seem to work on offense as well as in f.ex. SS, but again I feel that this is just causing me to play the game in a different manner. The only annoying thing about this at the moment is when a unit gets stuck on "reload" and cannot properly defend itself in melee.
Both 2) and 3) are due to be fixed in the next release; cavalry are too slow and javelineers don't work at all. Please see the unofficial hotfix (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?148305-Unofficial-Hotfix-Functional-inf-cav-javelineers-improved-spearmen-faster-cavalry) which resolves both.
As KH, I don't think I'm seeing generals coming of age, although I do see wives of generals dying. Does this mean KH can only get new generals through adoption and "Man of the hour", please?
In one battle during AI turn relieving a city besieged by me, about 7K Getai vs. my <3K Hellenes, upon victory, something got stucked - game didn't crash, menu was working, but general was just smashing the sword against the city, but capture screen would not open. Also all armies stayed alive, when I replayed the battle after loading again (enemy took some more turns to attack), it ended normally. I suppose this isn't too helpful, but not sure I can give more details.
Game crashes from time to time, especially scrolling through menus. Not too bad though.
As KH, state of the hoplites is such that it's much easier to switch to phalanx asap. And of course best way to fight the phalanx is not to fight the phalanx but rout it.
I notice there is some hotfix for cavalry, not sure if it includes also units reforming to relatively narrow columns quite often.
I haven't grasped the colonization, although I ask about that in separate thread.
EDIT:
Also, BOII are on flight, they apparently have most money of all, but only one army with four units and no settlement. I think they are static now for lot of turns.
QuintusSertorius
10-27-2014, 12:23
I notice there is some hotfix for cavalry, not sure if it includes also units reforming to relatively narrow columns quite often.
Only for underarm lancer units, other cavalry's formations haven't been touched.
CelticKing
10-27-2014, 18:16
Loving the new mod thus far! I made an account just to post and say great job guys!
I think I will start a new campaign as Pergammon today...
Vilkku92
10-29-2014, 14:31
I've been playing the game for a couple of weeks by now. Started a with Boii, and have so far got somewhere around turn 160-200, give or take 20 turns. Yeah, I'm not that a methodical player. Anyway, I thought I could share some impressions here.
First of all, the mod is visually stunning. It looks downright beautiful even on lower-than-medium settings, and isn't ugly on the lowest settings either, which is what I've had to use. Got to scale the unit size down for the next campaign. Variance in appearances within a single unit is especially nice, being rich and plentiful and doing a good job in representing the non-standardized nature of equipment and weaponry in armies of the era. Having seen a little of Rome II, I could say EB2 could be on par with it graphics-wise, so good job there. :2thumbsup:
Gameplay seems to have improved from the earlier also, and I like most of the design choices you have made here. Boii started the campaign actually making money instead of losing it, which would have been unthinkable for a landlocked Central European faction in first EB. I also like how recruitment is tied to the government type instead of two separate barrack-buildings whose maximum levels are determined by government type. It's also nice to be able to recruit elite units right from the start instead of waiting for several decades to have the barracks on high enough level. Recruitment pool mechanic is also adding new depth to the strategic level, since retraining and spamming a single type of unit is much harder. AI also seems to be smarter, but I can't be sure. Prices of the units also seem to correlate well with their usefulness, which is a nice change.
Battles work very differently from EB1, and are also harder. Their pace has also been reduced quite a lot. Units move slower, missiles have shorter range (I think) and AI works smarter and more aggressively, making several old tactics either useless or less effective and harder to execute. Units also die slower but break and regroup faster, making morale and maneuvering superior to brute force in almost every way. Cavalry is also less effective at charges but seems to have more staying power in melee, making the moral impact of their charges more important than the killing power. I like these changes since it makes decisions made on the strategic map more important, because players can no longer just fight their way through every tough situation they might face. Besides, you get used to it soon.
Mod has also been quite stable, and it has crashed only about two times. It also works faster than EB1, with battles, menus and campaign map loading more quickly. Props for that also. :2thumbsup:
There are some issues, though. The Boii faction colour, for example, is nigh-impossible to see from the faction ranking-scroll, and the same colour also makes it hard to see the strength of my armies from their banners. Siege battles also take extremely long time, especially when attacking, and that makes them annoying to play. I haven't also seen any change at all in the authority of my faction leaders no matter how many confederations I build, even though the building description says so, so that might be broken. I don't really understand much about authority anyway though, so it might just be my imagination. :shrug:
All in all, however, the mod's excellent. Keep up the good work!
I have a question : When were the Etruscans completely defeated in Italy and under Roman rule, as in what year near the starting timeframe of the mod?
And a suggestion : I REALLY recommend that for reform requirements scripts, the team removes criteria such as "fight x battles of over y units against z faction / regions" for everyone. It's so random, frustrating and extremely unlikely to happen like that due to the nature of Total War. Replace those with something more feasibly, like "own region x, y and z", or something less specific of the sort. V.T. Marvin
Ortilochus
11-02-2014, 06:48
Strange to be back playing EB and looking at these forums again after so long but thank you guys for working so hard on getting it released.
Having heard that EBII was out I ordered Medieval Total War II and played a long campaign as France which was fun. Then I tried EB 2.01 and sound effects didn't seem to work which may have been the gold 1.5 patch not installed correctly. So reinstalled everything but came with a securcom wrong disc message. And this came up even without EB installed. After a lot of trial and error and research, it seems that the Kingdom exe launcher was changed after I installed the 1.5 patch gold patch for MTW2 and this stopped Kingdoms from launching. So after installing and reinstalling a few times, I only had to replace Kingdoms.exe with an unprotected version and it worked fine for Kingdoms and EB2.01 with no wrong disc error.
Anyway love game and love how authentic it looks and feels, especially in contrast with the vanilla version. I've started with Koinon Hellenon faction. I have really enjoyed living out my fantasy bringing further glory for the Ancient Greeks. Military Conquest building with no description is the only problem I've encountered so far which I imagine with be in the updates. I love the detail; the look of the units; how the battles feel challenging on VH; and how generals and family members seem to me to be more relevant to how I play the game. There has been some initial confusion with minor settlements, colonies, reform conditions and such. But less so after reading here and playing the game. So much fun to be playing Europa Barbarorum again.
So, its about time for my first General Impressions also - ..i enjoyed the Game so much that i almost forget to give some feedback also. ..and as a Pc/software dummy, not able to help actively in the development of this great Mod, i can only at least try to give some back in form of feedback and not only quietly benefit from all the work from you peoples involved in this great great Mod.
Hope i do not write here to much of things already reported. And i dont add here things i already read about here or were already some additional mods/Patches are available.(like regarding the skirmishers and long-range Psiloi, Cavalry, or the FM Traits).
First of all for a (still) Beta Version this Game is marvelous!
The whole Game is unexpected really very stable! Even more than the final EB 1.2. I never had this after Battle CTD's only within about 80 seasons some 3 or 4 happenings on Strategy Map; when all of a sudden after clicking on some unit or diplomatic info or such, the fields for the accept/ok and exit/leave buttons are not shown - i.e. square fields of another colour or a cutout of some other Picture is shown there instead.
Right after that comes a message that EB2.01 would now be closed because of some error. An quite convenient announced CTD ;-). But since never a CTD took place right after a battle - never a long hard battle was in vain!
That is really great for a Beta version! (..i expected the other way around)
Great Work! :2thumbsup:
Of course the units and the Vegetation and Cities look awesome! ..so detailed - just great.
But regarding saturation and colours i find something had to be done for the next release: Tux already made a great Patch which solves most of the over saturation problem in vegetation (e.g. the poisonous green of the grass is gone there and he added interesting lighting) maybe still a bit more can be modified there - as also the trees are sometimes to over saturated green or not so natural green and quite often it is to dark.
The saturation of the units itself i find also a bit to much. I know, there is the Graphic Enhancement Mod for that - but i sadly cannot use it. (it works perfectly in Battle but strangely the Campaign map is sooo awfully slow with it - disabling it doesn't change anything - that the Game is actually unplayable with it) ..in my case some compatability problem of my graphic card. ...but since its not a to old one (2009 - GeForce 240GT - quite some time after M2TW came out) some better solution integrated in a future release would be great.
Another thing: compared to EB1 the shapes/outlines are definitely more sharp as in EB1. Like the Sarisses of the Soldiers or the sea-horizon. ..drawn like with a sharp pencil - while in EB1 it looked more realistic.
I already started a thread about if Antialiasing is recommended for EB2.01 or not. https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?148431-Antialiasing-recommended-or-not
So i dont write all of this here down again.
But still after enabling Antialiasing - those straight lines looked better in my opinion in EB1.
The CAI: im a very slow player (also because of my time) so i can only report of my roughly 20 years campaing as Pergamon. ..with the CAI by default in the EB2.01 version.
Interesting naval invasions took place - even the Sauromatae and Getai use Fleets (maybe regarding Steppe-Factions this is a bit immoderate.)
So a Campaign is definitely more difficult for the player and varied. ..never boring! :yes:
But i have to add that those naval invasions sometimes are really planless. e.g. the Getai are my Allies now since about ten years but instead of further expanding (they own now three provinces) into their very homeland Transylvania with Sarmiszegetusa as Capital (sorry dont know now the ancient Province name) they come over to my Thraikia Chersonesos and Bithynia and even landing with Fleets in Bithynia. They were staying with quite large armies near Nikaia then again at Byzantion or were roaming around in Pergamon Provinces - without transgression messages. I still kept them as Ally as i thought as long as they do not attack me i dont bother... but its not very realistic.
Anyway after some time, they are meanwhile at war with the Sauromatae, they left Pergamon Territory and even moved further east onto Pontos and besieged Amaseia. Pontos of course fought them back. (Pontos still only owned their one homeland province and kept their quite large army only to protect it. That also because i buffed up the Ankyra Garrison quite in the beginning so in order that sometime when the Galatians will produce Units also outside of Ankyra i can buff this army up also and will be able to fight them two times in order to fulfil the Pergamon Reform requirements.
..im curious how this campaing will proceede.
but coming to the point again, yes its never boring but surprising and sometimes a bit unrealistic/immoderate.
Also another thing regarding the fleets: all other Factions (as mentioned even the Sauromatae) produce fleets - and not only one, but instead of merging the fleets (i only encounterd one time a fleet of two trireme fleets) all those fleets roam around as loners. ..ok, sometimes at critical points or times they come together so that they would reinforce themselves but still its not the same - also it looks weird - so much fleets (ships in display) - a bit crowded.
Of course as Player i merge my fleets to be strong enough - and at the time 254BC now - a fleet of three Trireme Fleets merged together is strong enough to prevail.
The Ai-Factions should be able to use this approach also.
When assaulting a Town: the Building Captured Message only show up when capturing a Gate. (dont know maybe thats a M2TW default thing?.) ..and strangely even after a Gate was secured the fire from the Gate-Towers still comes down on the Players army and not the other way around like in EB1. Strangely this (regarding the Gate-Towers) happens not always - in some Assaults they functioned then like in EB1.
Same with the other Towers - although my units running through them ..they were not beset with my own forces but still were firing on my units. ..and again: but this time i am not so definitely sure, this happens not always like this.
Unit Experience Points: they do not add to defence skill - only to the attack points, but after two more also the increase of them stops. i.e. i can have really tough 6 chevron Veteran Units but still they only have two or three points more in attack - and only there. no defence skill is increased.
Battle statistics: sometimes they are not shown full, i mean the detailed statistics, and they are then not able to scroll down. ..thats just a very minor thing but just i noticed it.
Some problem with the Gymnasion Mikron: the retraining of units does not work all the time. First i didnt know that compared to EB1, here it is not intended to be able to retrain (one or even more) and recruit a new unit within one season. But then i encountered a small kind of bug after construction of the Gymnasion Mikron: in the first seasons with it, fresh recruited units came out with no experience points added, so i had to retrain them. After a few seasons and since then, the fresh recruited ones came out as in EB1 with 1 chevron. But still when i retrain units (in my campaign mainly fresh units from other provinces without a Gymnasion), they come out in the next season randomly sometimes with the chevron or not.
Of course, all this is meant as feedback and not as bitching around, in case some of it will sound like it...english is also not my native tongue..
So finally: a big Thank you for all you developers and members of the team or anyone who is involved in developing this awesome mod!
:hail:
Kleitos
Can I put the "beehive" music back in and take the "Greek kebab house" music out?
Absolutely no other criticisms whatsoever. Well, the fact that my boys walk through walls sometimes, but then my boys are magic...
Hi, have played EBI since 0.something and enjoyed it a lot (a mod I always come back to).
And when I stumbled over EBII 2.01 I immediately dusted off MTWII and installed the game an mod.
Have put a lot of hours into the game already and can only give you the team the highest kudos for a beautiful and exciting mod.
Love the new factions (haven't played them all yet), they really give something to the game play (ex Ptolemaio don't blitz the hole of the eastern map anymore)
Things I have noticed during my game time in EBII:
In the diplomacy screen for some factions, when accepting an amount of mnai to pay, the accept and decline symbols have been swapped (Baktria and Bosporos)
In a Carthage game my starting ship unit (can't remember the name) ended up as a land unit when entering Cartago (got the save game if, if you are interested).
The aforementioned ship unit is described as a siege engine in its unit card.
In a game playing as Rome, I had 4 neutral Epiros army stacks standing around roman controlled Rhegion for over 50 turns as they tried to come over to Carthage controlled Messana. Really missed an option to expel the armies without going to total war with Epiros :laugh4:
I have noticed that the late Sweboz armies just sweeps the other ai factions off the map like flies. And when I attack a late Sweboz controlled city/camp whit 2 or 3 units in it whit a full army stack I loose around 45% to 60% on auto resolve. And in battle mode against the Sweboz the late german spearmen seem "almost" invincibly. So for me it seems like the late Sweboz are a bit overpowered.
Haven't played the Sweboz yet, so don't have the whole picture.
EBII seems slower paced than EBI, which I like. Love to build up my cities in my empire before releasing my legions/hordes on the known world.
So kudos too the EB team for a great mod and for all the hours they put into this greatest of mods :ave:
TheWildHost
11-27-2014, 18:33
I have noticed that the late Sweboz armies just sweeps the other ai factions off the map like flies.
Same for me, They control most of Europe North of the Alps. Also I've never seen anyone but Makedonia win the war for Greece
I have noticed that the late Sweboz armies just sweeps the other ai factions off the map like flies. And when I attack a late Sweboz controlled city/camp whit 2 or 3 units in it whit a full army stack I loose around 45% to 60% on auto resolve. And in battle mode against the Sweboz the late german spearmen seem "almost" invincibly. So for me it seems like the late Sweboz are a bit overpowered.
Haven't played the Sweboz yet, so don't have the whole picture.
they're not: the stats are generally only slightly better than earlier versions of the Sweboz. The near invincibility I suspect is due to the generals: they have a nasty feature when fighting them (the things you learn about Germanic military culture :clown:).
if you want to reduce casualties and ease your life, I would suggest one of two possibilities:
1-hit the general's unit from its left flank (i.e. where the general is), and kill him. while you do that, hit the rest of the army hard--very hard. the combined effect of pressure and the loss of a general should send the regular units packing. then focus on the rest of the late general's bodyguard, and surround them and give them everything you got.
2-bring lots of missiles against the Sweboz: they are not well armored, so are vulnerable in the extreme.
either way, I find it fascinating that this mirrors what did happen historically (sort of): Germanic peoples did come to dominate central Europe culturally and politically, and later spilled across the Rhine and Danube.
About 2- ....missiles do not generally do damage in this version of the game... practically none in my experience. Practically the only thing that works in the tactical combat map is maneuvering. Again in my experience it is no use attacking a unit for the kill before it routes... effort is better placed attacking morale more than anything else.
About 2- ....missiles do not generally do damage in this version of the game... practically none in my experience
That's because you're clearly not interested enough to explore this very forum to find out a fix for skirmisher units that makes them quite deadly and useful as you are interested to type about it.
Vilkku92
11-30-2014, 14:22
That's because you're clearly not interested enough to explore this very forum to find out a fix for skirmisher units that makes them quite deadly and useful as you are interested to type about it.
Well, archers and slingers seem to have a lot of trouble doing damage as well, and they actually shoot at the enemy, provided they are in range. And have line of sight. And you micromanage them so they actually open fire instead of walking right into charging enemies.
Of course, no unit actually does much damage in a head on fight, unless you give them a lot of time. Winning quite often comes down to maneuvering in such away that you can do as much damage to their morale as possible, not actually killing enemies.
Their long range can't make them as deadly, archers against any armoured enemy won't be very effective, yeah, but slingers can do damage.
Dear developers,
I decided to start a Sweboz campaign for the first time a few days ago and I am compelled to say that the implementation of the culture constitutes pure brilliance!
The tribal migrations in particular, add a whole new level of immersion but strangely, no one ever commented on this feature on this forum as far as I know.
Having the migrations modelled that way already for the Sweboz, do you plan to implement them for the Celts and the Lugians as well? Could it be ahistorical to add tribal migrations for these factions given the fact that the Celts are much less nomadic in nature and Lugians did not really took part in migratory movements (I may be very wrong here) until the last centuries of the western Roman Empire?
Hats off gentlemen._
That's because you're clearly not interested enough to explore this very forum to find out a fix for skirmisher units that makes them quite deadly and useful as you are interested to type about it.
Really?
QuintusSertorius
12-07-2014, 13:44
Really?
My unofficial fix (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?148305-Unofficial-Hotfix-Functional-inf-cav-javelineers-improved-spearmen-faster-cavalry) is on the front page of this very forum.
I'm working with Ibrahim on the official EDU now, this amongst other things will be fixed in the next release, but also in a test release prior to that.
Same for me, They control most of Europe North of the Alps. Also I've never seen anyone but Makedonia win the war for Greece
true, mostly Makedonia prevails in Hellas Proper. But take a look at this one:
14801
Happened in my fifth Pergamon Campaign - i was delighted to see the Koinon Hellenon in that Situation. :yes: ...dont know how this happened - since most of Makedonias Armies remained i guess their Dynasty was wiped out in a major Assassin Attack.
TheWildHost
12-07-2014, 20:26
Yeah I've seen Ep win once and in my Current Bosp. the KH just cleaned house and is the current ruler.
My unofficial fix (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?148305-Unofficial-Hotfix-Functional-inf-cav-javelineers-improved-spearmen-faster-cavalry) is on the front page of this very forum.
I'm working with Ibrahim on the official EDU now, this amongst other things will be fixed in the next release, but also in a test release prior to that.
~:) ... not what I was going for... but thank you...
75Antons
01-13-2015, 20:43
Ok then. Not exactly my first impressions, but, oh well.
I downloaded the original release of EBII a couple of days after it was put out in the world, however didn't really get enough time to play it (only 20-30 turns) but I did like the way it looked. After xmas I went for a fresh install of the 2.01 with the A.I. hotfix thingie and have, so far, played about 200 turns of the SPQR campaign on VH/M.
Likes
First: It looks wonderful, the battles are a joy to watch. The modeling on the units is really superb. Grats to all those involved with the skins.
Second: I love the adaptation of religion from MedII to politics in EBII. It makes it a serious challenge to keep cities that have no relation to your faction's politics from going crazy and rebelling (yes, I had a newly taken city with only 400+ housholds rebel with a garrison of over 2k, oh well. (note to self: Try not to instantly Romanise new cities and let them just be allied to start with))
Third: The number of unit types and quality is really nice. You can make up an army with lots of variation and there is gives you tactical flexibility.
Dislikes
First: The A.I. is still a problem. The factions just don't defend themselves. They will happily have 2 (or more) full stacks next to one of their cities and just watch it fall, no matter who the enemy is, me or another faction.
Second: I know of VH the A.I. gets a financial boost (as it does on any TW game) but, seeing Pergamon with 1 city and 6 full stack armies is a bit crazy. Especially as I own the entire of Italy and can just about afford 2 armies. I don't mind them having the stacks, if they actually bothered to use them(see above).
Third: There is no third.
I know it is still a work very much in progress and it is made by a bunch of dedicated people giving up their valuable free time and for that, I am eternally grateful. I have actually bought games from reputable companies that have more issues than this mod.
Keep up the great work and I happily and patiently wait for the next update.
Perturabo
01-17-2015, 02:37
I've been playing for a couple of days now - my first impressions were so good I've taken a day off work on Monday to get a bit of extra time in :no:
Good Stuff:
It works on my new Win 8.1 supercomputer - no seriously, full graphics, massive unit size and no lag whatsoever.. unbelievable!
*The units are outstanding and obviously the skins were a labour of love.
*The battles are quite incredible to watch, as all MTW2 battles were - credit where credit's due, for all their other issues the developers (Sega) did a great job on this one, and EB gives it a really unique take.
*The map is huge and I suspect that as with EB1 I could probably lose a lot of my life to this game. The fact that it is largely historically accurate is a really nice bonus.
* I haven't played long enough to be sure, however I suspect that the diplomacy is going to be incomparably better than EB1 which I know had hardcoded AI that was utterly miserable to deal with. Even vanilla MTW2 had better AI/Diplomacy than the best RTW mods sadly.
Not so good stuff
AI seems to be very defensive and passive so far, a bit too far to the other extreme than EB1 which had mindlessly homicidal AI (due to hardcoding I know). I have played a brief game as Rome and now my main campaign is Pergamon, in Rome I kicked the Eperiots out of Italic territory with nary any resistance, it was all defensive.
As Pergamon, my first two turns resulted in 2 new cities courtesy of the Ptolies, and once again no fightback. I haven't even had any of my ports besieged by their fleets.
I notice that even if the AI has a force inside a fort that could possibly relieve a besieged army, they don't ever seem to try against a player, they generally wait until the city has fallen and then march off into their nearest territory.
Anyhow, its great fun and I'm probably going to spend a lot of time playing it. I have to say, despite it not being the finished product I'm amazed at how stable it is in general. I'm getting a lot less CTD's than the final EB1 so far.
Looking forward to future updates!
Perturabo
01-18-2015, 02:31
Ok, so a bit of a retraction on my above notes.
I increased the campaign difficulty setting to 'difficult' (as recommended) and suddenly I'm seeing AI action. Outstanding!
Diplomacy is a bit funny though, in my Mak campaign I had KH down to only Rhodes with the FL inside the city, no troops and they still completely refused to become a vassal. Mebbe an army on the island would have helped.
On a positive note with regards to diplomacy, in my new Hard campaign with Pergamon I've had multiple requests from the Ptolemies for me to become their vassal.
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