View Full Version : Suggestions for v0.74/0.8
Please post suggestions for the next version of EB here. All complaints, comments, tech support issues, and discussions which do not pertain to the next version of EB should be posted elsewhere.
Dear EB Team,
The obvious would be to carry on into the next period but as that has been done by RTW and no doubt you will bring out a better version, why not go in the opposite direction. Is it possible to start Rome under Aeneas and or begin with his flight from Troy to Rome and then build around the conquests and alliances down to the time of 7.3. The time factor would more than cover for the lack of opponents as each ruler would be included and the game could only continue as each overcomes his enemies. The idea comes after playing Slitherine's terrific new game Legion Arena. Am I asking too much or do I underestimate the genius of you guys?
Yours,
basics.
maybe you could make a mod with that in it, but as you said thats the total opposite of what they're trying to accomplish right now...
if I'm wrong, then I apologize, but I think they enjoy their set start and end dates and wish to progress with said time period before looking elsewhere.
Khelven isn't talking about "EB 2.0", but "EB .74". That means what do you think we should include in the next patch/version? Not stuff that's broken or obviously missing, but new concepts or ideas.
If its possible, I'd like to see some sort of scripting that would direct computer-controlled factions to expand as they really did.
I would really love to see more sprites. It's not really important gameplay wise, but it really does change the beauty of the EB models when they all appear the same from far away.
Foot
Sorry,
Got the wrong end of the stick there. It's old age I'm afraid.
Yours,
basics.
Sprites, the new units, some of that new beautiful vegetation people have been making, and anytime you can add more to the traits and scripting (the coolest part about EB to me) that's a good thing.
Is the plan to add a new faction in the next build, or is it further down the line?
nemesisvsbrad
03-05-2006, 22:11
I want assassins to take out my mother-in-laws. They have been letting down my generals, embarrassing. Also, the adoptees or son-in-laws usually have unwanted traits, is there some way to make them little better. My daughters reach 40's and still have no husbands. So far (240bc) no CTD, I am very happy about everything in EB except my mother-in-laws.
Well, the mother-in-law thing, I assume is just their focus on realism ~:cheers:
Iskandr
Reenk Roink
03-05-2006, 23:32
If its possible, I'd like to see some sort of scripting that would direct computer-controlled factions to expand as they really did.
Touche, I really think this is the most important thing to do next.
With this...
man...
EB would be...
*dies*
whats the low down on the farming script?
I don't understand, what do you mean expand "as they should?"
BerkeleyBoi
03-05-2006, 23:57
I'm not sure historically how they were used, by roman slingers seem to be the most useful unit in the early game. I began by building slingers as cheap garrison units in all my cities and attacked with all the other units I had, but after my main army was wiped out in an attack on a northern rebel city, I decided to throw all my slingers with a couple hastati and principes at a full stack rebel garrison.
Surprisingly, when the rebels attacked my sieging army, my slinger army killed 60-75 percent of the rebels coming out of the gates, making them easy prey for my four infantry units.
So... my suggestion is to tone down the power of the slingers. They seem to be able to kill way too many soldiers, especially for their cheap cost. (also, I'm not sure why they're so powerful, their attack rating is a '1'...)
Reenk Roink
03-06-2006, 00:11
I don't understand, what do you mean expand "as they should?"
If you are refering to tk-421's suggestion, what I think he means is that the factions should expand in the game like they did historically, and not like what we have been seeing in 0.7.2. However, what I had heard earlier is that this was well near-impossible to control. Then again, the EB team has amazed us before :grin:.
We will never try to get the factions to expand as they did historically. We are not trying to recreate history here, but to rewrite it.
Trithemius
03-06-2006, 00:31
We will never try to get the factions to expand as they did historically. We are not trying to recreate history here, but to rewrite it.
In this vein, I was wondering if the triggers for the Roman military reforms were still linked to dates or have they been changed to "game factors" for this build?
If they are still date-linked, then please consider associating them with game factors for the subsequent builds, as I think this further plays upon the alternative history aspect of the game.
Reenk Roink
03-06-2006, 00:35
We will never try to get the factions to expand as they did historically. We are not trying to recreate history here, but to rewrite it.
Very well, but can you tell us if you have made the AI factions to expand as they do, or is it just a mystery of the hardcode?
Malrubius
03-06-2006, 00:52
AI factions prefer attacking rebel cities to other factions' cities. That seems to be the primary determinant.
I don't see how you would script a campaign like ours to have the AI attack specific cities. In a campaign designed around a single faction or for some type of short campaign, I could see this being possible.
SwordsMaster
03-06-2006, 02:21
Hey, this is more of an error than it is a wish for the next build, but nonetheles...
Playing Romani, date irrelevant. If my diplomat gets the +5 to diplomacy trait by attempting to bribe a carthaginian (haven't tried with others yet) army, the message about the trait expansion shows up. All good and normal until here.
If in subsequent turns I try bribing (unsuccessfully) other carthaginian armies, the message for the +5 trait aquisition appears again and again.
This is not a game breaker, but it is slightly annoying. Otherwise great job. I like the classical GUI.
Keep in mind, folks, these are the "beta" GUIs we had installed in the 0.72 version of EB. We just didn't know how to "activate" them until now. Teleklos and others have worked hard on updating them; these are very early versions.
In the next full release you'll see much prettier versions of them.
Some way to represent dynastic infighting perhaps if a first born son is passed over he can feel resentful creating unrest in cities? that kind of thing
Also and I don't know if this is as much of a suggestion but I still find population growth excessive. I don't feel a city should be able to go from a small village to a huge city in a matter of a decade or two at least not without bringing people in from other cities.
QwertyMIDX
03-06-2006, 09:01
whats the low down on the farming script?
Waiting for information on about 75 provinces, if you want to help I can give you the list of provinces that need research ~;).
oudysseos
03-06-2006, 10:56
I'd like to see the whole logistics element expanded- I've seen some references to this but I'm not sure how it works yet- what I'm wondering is will it be possible to restrict army stack movement away from supply lines? You could consider a conquered city as a supply dump and limit the radius of movement points or limit the number of turns an army can spend in the field. I know that there are some traits coming that apply to logistics but I'm not sure if that'll actually prevent an army from moving past its lines of supply. If it's not possible to limit an army's movement, then how about a 'Living off the Land' trait that increases unrest or increases the chance of a rebel spawn?
Geoffrey S
03-06-2006, 11:42
Some of Duke John's beautiful agricultural techniques.
3 problems I've noticed since I installed the patch and fixed the wall issue myself.
1. Forests in and around Italy are insanely dense. I get mega lag as well as major pathfinder issues since troops keep getting stuck.
2. Had lots of fights no problem. But fighting out of Italy I get CTDs about 50% of the time when battles are just about to start. Reload fixes this but its killing ai expansion even more.
3. AI is dead, it can't beat the rebels. Every rebel city has a full stack in it.
Edit: Oh yeah what's up with the money now? As Romans I'm playing how I always used to, I have all of Italy and I've got 100,000 in the bank. Granted I only have 1 proper army and no navy.
nikolai1962
03-06-2006, 23:15
We will never try to get the factions to expand as they did historically. We are not trying to recreate history here, but to rewrite it.
Sort of related to this but not in the same way. One of the things i thought about when i first got the vanilla game and played it half-heartedly while thinking how it could be much better was how historically different groups expanded in very ways, organisationally I mean. The Romans were one of the few groups who had a borg style cultural assimilation method whereas most other historical empires were client/tributary kingdom type empires.
EB is obviously moving in that direction with the government type idea but my suggestions below are about taking it further and accentuating the differences between factions so that playing them *feels* very different. (Some of these ideas are probably already going to be future versions if they can be coded I guess.)
1) Roman borg style expansion.
Homeland expansion in italy broken down into stages with upgraded homeland governments. Should take a lot of years to get to the final stage but broken up into steps so you got the alae troops earlier just with big morale penalty that gradually improves, *much* larger unrest penalty initially, reducing with each stage constructed as the italian cities were constantly rebelling.
Provincial expansion broken into steps too. Again much worse unrest and morale penalties initially, gradually tapering off. Final stage would be provincial capital that was tied to certain regions that were historically the capitals of the roman provinces or some way to restrict it to a limited number with the provincial capital providing actual bonuses instead of penalties.
2) Barbarians.
More geared to the tributary type arrangement. Much more limited in homeland expansion as simulating lots of independent minded tribes who share a common culture and not neccessarily a common loyalty to anything except a particular king/leader. (Most empires fell apart when the creator died or not long after). Expansion type governments even in most of their cultural homelands. The casse for example maybe just homeland in their staring province and client/allied in the rest of Britain. The barbarian cultures however would be used to this sort of thing and used to fighting for the guy who beat their army and barb tributary tribes/kingdoms would have less morale penalties maybe. Expansion model for barbs being more like a horde thing to simulate the times when they did just take over a new area and displace/enslave the original inhabitants. Possibly a "horde" building like the colonia which when complete allows a homeland government.
Outside their cultural homeland much more of a client kingdom/tributary/protection racket type deal. So for example a civilized city recruits only garrison quality troops with huge morale penalty but big trade bonus to simulate the basically protection racket type arrangement.
3) Trading Colonizers (Greeks and Carthaginians)
A lot of the history I've read speaks of greek and carthage colonies being basically trading islands in a sea of local tribes as they didn't seem to have the same desire as the romans to control everything. So for the greeks, outside of greece, and carthage pretty much everywhere except carthage itself, a government model that simulates this. Lots of unrest penalties to simulate the local tribes outside the walls, ability to hire local troops, big problems building your own troops to simulate the small numbers of your citizens available. In tandem you have the colonia building, broken into stages, which gradually counter-balance the big unrest penalty and whose final level is a condition for a colonized_homeland government so the condition for a homeland government would be precursor1 or colonia_stage4 (or something).
Secondary to this I always wanted to see something for the greeks (outside of greece) and carthage that simulated the sea trade aspect of their expansion so that for example the huge unrest penalties of their expansion type of government could only be offset by happiness buildings that required a port i.e coastal provinces would be the easiest places for them to expand.
4) Persian successors.
All the empires that took over from the persians seem to have collected some of their know-how vis a vis controlling huge chunks of that part of the world. The seleucids and maybe the ptolemies could start with that know-how, simulated with the hippodrome i.e making it basically impossible to control large empires without some particular mechanism. Simulated for the romans with their arena buildings, the seleucids with the hippodrome and the greeks with their theatres (where there are enough greek colonists i.e colonia levels).
Other factions would either have to rely on a much looser and more fragile empire of client states and tributaries unless they *learn* a mechanism. This brings me to some more general suggestions. But basically what I'd like to see is the player having to expand very differently depending on the type of faction.
~~~
Non-military reforms.
Factions like pontus, armenia, baktria etc could have a reform mechanism to learn from the seleucids how to manage a big empire, simulated by becoming able to build hippodromes and stage races.
Barbs could learn stuff from conquering i.e creating tributary/allied governments in civilized regions e.g mining improvements or road improvements.
Like a previous poster I think pop growth is too fast (as it is is in the vanilla game and all the mods i've played). One of the reasons isthe number of buildings with pop bonus or health bonus and the large values they have. I much prefer the idea of generally slower pop growth. As the script gives pop back to the ai when it builds troops this would give the player something to have to think hard about when it came to where and when to raise units.
One thought i had was to make some of the buildings require non-military reforms e.g farming levels, improvement of health buildings, granary buildings etc. So for example farms+2 wasn't available until x date or maybe certain things could be triggered by building academy type buildings.
Other thoughts on the population thing are:
1) Reduce base fertility of provinces.
2) Spread building levels out more according to city size.
3) Historically certain cities became very large for reasons sprcific to their location (usually). Obviously if a big empire wanted it's capital in a particular spot you should be able have (expensive) options but generally the reasons would be geographical.
One thing would be take the pop growth bonus off the market line of buildings that can be built anywhere and put it on the port line. Especially if you have the sytem where not every coastal province can build the shipwright and dockyard levels. If the provinces that can build the bigger ports are the historically famous trading places then having the pop growth on the port buildings would simulate the fact that it was often the major trade hubs that grew large. Similarly with the unique roads or at least the terminus regions of the unique roads.
Generally my suggestion is to make base pop growth much slower except in areas with natural geographical advantages or heavy player investment. I'd like to see most regions stagnate at around city size (or even large town) with some large cities and huge cities only possible *naturally* in very few places. Though with some very expensive mechanism for doing it unnaturally to simulate a big empire just deciding it wanted a big city in a particular place. A grain_import line of buildings for example.
~~~
Connected to all this is the desire to accentuate differences between regions, expansion models and how each faction plays. One of the things i noticed in the short games I've been playing was how as macedon i didn't want to build troops in my mak cities as the pop was low whereas i could just build a quick allied government in athens which had a high pop. The allied government gave an xp bonus of 1 and a morale penalty of 2. IIRC what each chevron of xp gives is +1 attack, +1 defense skill and +2 morale. So even if the morale penalty works (never tested it myself but generally in the game i think bonuses don't often work negatively) minus 2 is not very much given how much higher most mods set base morale.
So it made more sense to me to just build all my beginning troops in athens. I think the morale differences between the different faction government models and the conquered cities should be much starker. In the worst case I'd want allied/subject troops to have vanilla type morale to make the game much more of a juggling match between harbouring your homeland population and really flaky allied troops that you are always worrying about. So you'd have penalties like -10 or -12 or something. Less for subject barb tribes who were generally warlike.
Generally make the government types more extreme.
There were some more things i thought of but that will do for now :)
edit: Another reform idea was romans not able to build greek-style theatres straight away but learning it either as a reform event or a general's trait as I think rome got more hellenized after they conquered greece. Maybe other hellenization things too.
edit2: Temporary wave of unrest for king type factions when king dies.
edit3: Maybe just a personal thing but i never liked bring able to pick up cretan archer type mercenaries while wandering around the countryside. I'd like units like that to be recruitable through ports instead. 4-6 turns to build, expensive but retrainable.
~~~
None of this is criticism btw. I love the government idea and just want to make it even more distinctive between the factions and the effects of the player's government choices more of a headache.
We will never try to get the factions to expand as they did historically. We are not trying to recreate history here, but to rewrite it.
I don't mean that you should try to make each faction expand exactly as they did. That would be impossible and probably wouldn't make for a very fun game. I would just like to see expansion a little bit more realistic. I think you should, if possible (most of it probably isn't), with scripting and other means, make
1. most Eleutheroi harder to conquer
2. Rome stronger
3. Carthage concentrate more on Iberia and Sicily than the Sahara Desert
4. Direct Carthage and Rome to war
5. Ptolemies and Seleucids fight each other more instead of conquering Arabia
6. Direct Parthia and the Seleucid Empire to constant wars that the Parthians will usually win
On an unrelated topic, there are too many people on this thread with the british desert warrior guy for an avatar so I'm going to change mine.
1. most Eleutheroi harder to conquerSpecifically, have you had problems with this?
2. Rome strongerStronger how?
3. Carthage concentrate more on Iberia and Sicily than the Sahara DesertThe Sahara is one province, easy to conquer, and gives little benefit. They don't exactly concentrate there. We let Carthage expand whichever way it wants to. Sometimes that is Iberia, often it is towards Egypt.
4. Direct Carthage and Rome to warWe don't want to do this.
5. Ptolemies and Seleucids fight each other more instead of conquering ArabiaI don't know that we want to direct them to fight each other, honestly. Even if we could.
6. Direct Parthia and the Seleucid Empire to constant wars that the Parthians will usually winWe certainly don't want to do this. The Parthians may or may not go to war with the Seleukids, and they may or may not win. All of that is ok with us, whatever path they choose.
oudysseos
03-07-2006, 01:23
Nikolai's post is certainly very well thought out and I have been thinking about some of those very same issues, but with a different slant. I think that there is a tendancy to confound the way that things turned out historically with destiny. The different cultural government models that Nikolai wrote about developed in specific regions at specific times under very specific circumstances and didn't stay that way for long, so in a situation like EB which simulates the growth of empires over a long time (280 years or so), I think that freezing factions into certain governmental development paths is very innacurate.
Had Rome, for example, lost the First Carthaginian War, or later been sacked by Hannibal, burnt to the ground and sown with salt, most likely Carthage would have moved into the power vacuum in Italy and further east into what would have been former Roman spheres of influence. Coming then more fully into contact with Graeco-Roman culture, there would have been at least a distinct possibility for the Carthaginians to develop similar socio-political systems to what the Romans would have done. Essentially what I'm talking about here is a form of Convergent Evolution applied to history. There are any number of ways that societies can develop to fill the niches they occupy and I don't think that any of them are inevitable.
This is all very abstract: the concrete example that I have been thinking about is actually unit recruitment. Take Rome and Carthage (just for example).
I have been looking at the maps that show where the various factions can build their type one and two governments. The Roman 'red zone' is more or less conterminous with the empire at its zenith, and reasonably so. The Carthaginian opportunities to build homeland governments seem much smaller- I know that the Carthaginians have very narrow recruitment options in greco-hellenic cities they conquer (Syracuse an Messina, for instance). I don't think that is a very good reprsentation of the alternative paths history might have taken: had Carthage prevailed against Rome why couldn't they have developed (in EB terms) more type 1 and 2 governments further afield? THis is essentially what happened in Spain and why there are Cartago-Iberian units to recruit. The Carthags founded colonies and when the Romans curtailed their expansion in the east (1st Carthaginian War) it was the Barcids (Hannibal's father) who really developed Spain into 'New Carthage' and got together all those celtiberian troops. But that is all just an accident of history, so to speak, and there is nothing more 'realistic' or 'historical' about Carthage being able to raise Iberian troops than there would be for Carthage to raise hoplite troops and thessalian cavalry is they conquered Greece.
I think there ought to be some provision in the game for alternative development. It should be expensive and take a long time, but I don't see how it's justified to prevent Carthage from eventually training advanced troops anywhere they stay long enough. There shouldn't be Libyan spearman available in Italy, but there should be equivalents at comparable levels of investment. I think that the different factions are all unique enough, and I'm not suggesting that they shouldn't stay that way, just that they should all have the same ability to progress into advanced stages of development.
nikolai1962
03-07-2006, 01:24
Suggestions of a more technical nature.
I'd like to see the government/faction expansion models made as distinctive as possible. There are hard-coded limits in the game for things like building blocks and number of hidden resources as you guys know well. While I've been tinkering with the building file to make it work with the 1.5 patch I've thought of a few things as suggestions to get the most out of the limits. Some of them may not fit with bits of the EB design I don't understand but i'll mention them just in case they spark ideas or something.
Precursor buildings.
Two building blocks with just one building seem to me to be a prime candidate. One thought I had relates to your use of the combination of dummy hidden resources to individually specify regions. Given that you are further from the 64 hidden resources limit than you are from the 64 building block limit how about:
Reserve the first five greek letters as a homeland code so for example:
Rome: alpha
yuezhi: beta
arverni: gamma
macedon: delta
ptolemies: epsilon
seleucids: alpha beta
carthage: alpha gamma
parthia: alpha delta
pontus: alpha epsilon
aedui: beta gamma
germans: beta delta
britons: beta epsilon
armenia: gamma delta
dacia: delta epsilon
greek: alpha beta gamma
bactria: alpha beta delta
sarmatia: alpha beta epsilon
iberia: beta gamma delta
epirus: beta gamma epsilon
other: beta delta epsilon
other: gamma delta epsilon
Using 6 letters for the regional base culture would give a bunch of other slots for other non faction culture types or cross culture types.
The same codes can of course be used in the recruitment lines e.g,
alpha beta gamma: greek base units
alpha beta gamma zeta: athens
alpha beta gamma eta: sparta
alpha beta gamma theta: corinth
alpha beta gamma zeta eta: rhodes
alpha beta gamma zeta theta: somewhere else
alpha beta gamma eta theta: somewhere else
so even with just the existing 8 hidden resources you can have a base code for the 19 factions and individually specify 6 regions for each base. Adding a few more would give enough possibilities to specify each province individually if neccessary but at the same time make the recruitment system more transparent and free up the precursor slots for more factionally specific government type options.
The codes could also be used in the expansion possibilities to do away with the need for precursor2 e.g,
Romans could build expansion government anywhere outside Italia.
Barbs could have diff government type options in barb regions from non-barb regions. One for different tribes of their cultural group and one for other barbs who are used to the idea of a tribal confederacy type arrangment.
Greeks could have different option with epirus, macedon homeland regions compared with elsewhere.
Each freed building block gives 8 (or 9) more factionally specific government type options or other interesting historical stuff.
nikolai1962
03-07-2006, 01:40
I think that there is a tendancy to confound the way that things turned out historically with destiny. The different cultural government models that Nikolai wrote about developed in specific regions at specific times under very specific circumstances and didn't stay that way for long, so in a situation like EB which simulates the growth of empires over a long time (280 years or so), I think that freezing factions into certain governmental development paths is very innacurate.
I mostly agree with this and think factions should be able to *learn* certain things in the game in the way factions can learn to build cataphracts for example. Like parthians getting the ability to build hippodromes as they take over seleucid terriotory (with parthian and seleucid building bonuses set up to make it very difficult to control unrest in a large empire without using hippodromes).
I think both the pheonicians and the greeks were around for a long time though without ever getting into the imperial mindset. I think some of the history is based on particular cultural values. The carthaginians wanted money and trade whereas the romans seemed to have an enormous sense of superiority that made them want to assimilate everyone.
This doesn't mean the player should *have* to expand purely along a trading colony type model but i think it would be interesting if that was the optimal way at least at the beginning just to make those factions *feel* more different. Taking rome could trigger a reform or something that made carthage happiness bonus buildings buildable without a port for example to simulate them getting the taste for empire from the romans.
Or taking the current colonia block with one building and making it a colony/horde building with four stages for each path allowing a homeland government at stage 4. As of course carthage wasn't colonized in a day either :)
Teleklos Archelaou
03-07-2006, 02:09
I'd like to participate in this discussion, but testing things and fixing issues right now has got me swamped guys. I'll try to get back to this though. I have proposed a second level for govt type1 and type2, but we are still in discussions over it. It sort of got shelved for a bit while we were pushing for this patch and I've been working on a huge revision for the nomadic culture progression also.
nikolai1962
03-07-2006, 02:32
Sorry about all these posts but i got a bit obsessed while working with the 1.5porting.
Suggestion for incorporating the three farming blocks into two. Idea being to add arable to the list of region agricultural specifications so every region would be either arable, mixed, nomad or desert. It makes a clearer distinction between the agricultural value of different regions and gets rid of the "not" conditions that mess up the buildings parser at the cost of adding the arable hidden resource. The desert irrigation option is taken out as an upgrade to the granary buildings as it didn't make much sense for desert regions to get the most pop bonus.
building hinterland_farms
{
levels land_clearance farms farms+1 farms+2 farms+3 pastoral_farming ranching oasis_farming desert_irrigation
{
land_clearance requires factions { barbarian +civilized, }
{
capability
{
}
settlement_min village
upgrades
{
farms
pastoral_farming
oasis_farming
}
}
farms requires factions { barbarian, civilized, } and hidden_resource arable or hidden_resource mixed
{
upgrades
{
farms+1
}
}
farms+1 requires factions { civilized only, } and hidden_resource arable or hidden_resource mixed or factions { barbarian, } and hidden_resource_arable
{
upgrades
{
farms+2
}
}
farms+2 requires factions { civilized, } and hidden_resource arable
{
upgrades
{
farms+3
}
}
farms+3 requires factions { civilized, } and hidden_resource arable and hidden_resource river
{
upgrades
{
}
}
pastoral_farming requires factions { barbarian, civilized, } and hidden_resource nomad or hidden_resource mixed
{
upgrades
{
ranching
{
}
}
}
ranching requires factions { civilized, } and hidden_resource nomad
{
upgrades
{
}
}
oasis_farming requires factions { barbarian, civilized, } and hidden resource desert
{
upgrades
{
desert_irrigation
}
}
desert_irrigation requires factions { civilized, } and hidden resource desert
{
upgrades
{
}
}
}
plugins
{
}
}
Second half, which is more subjective really. I like it but it is just a suggestion. Basically the idea is to combine the villa block and the granary block and make them alternate paths. The idea being to give the player a choice between the granary path for pop growth or the villa path for trade bonus. This would simulate how a region could concentrate on agricultural production for feeding people or go for money by producing cash crops or crops used for value added such as grapes for wine. So a region that couldn't upgrade it's port because it didn't have the hidden resource that said it was a major trade type place you could let the population stagnate and just squeeze extra cash out of it with a trade bonus from a villa. Other cities you wanted to grow to be major troop production cities you'd build the granary line instead. And of course one more free building block.
building farms2
{
levels farms2_base granary grain_silo villa latifundium
{
farms2_base
{
upgrades
{
granary
villa
}
}
granary
{
upgrades
{
grain_silo
}
}
grain_silo
{
upgrades
{
}
}
villa
{
upgrades
{
latifundium
}
}
latifundium
{
upgrades
{
}
}
}
plugins
{
}
}
nikolai1962
03-07-2006, 02:35
I'd like to participate in this discussion, but testing things and fixing issues right now has got me swamped guys. I'll try to get back to this though. I have proposed a second level for govt type1 and type2, but we are still in discussions over it. It sort of got shelved for a bit while we were pushing for this patch and I've been working on a huge revision for the nomadic culture progression also.
I'm just posting all this stuff in my head before i forget. Feel free to either ignore or come back to it when you have time :)
1. most Eleutheroi harder to conquer
Specifically, have you had problems with this?
Yes. I've only played through two campaigns but the Rebel nations in general, especially Gaul, Arabia, Asia Minor, and North Africa seem to be conquered incredibly quickly.
2. Rome stronger
Stronger how?
Sorry for not being more specific, I was in sort of a hurry when I posted this.
In the Makedonia campaign that I played Rome never unified all of Italy. I only played until 190 something BC, but it seemed like the Romans should have been coming after me instead of struggling to capture the Epeiros-controlled southern tip of Italy. In my Koinon Hellenon campaign (got up to 240's) it seemed as if Rome was on a similar path.
3. Carthage concentrate more on Iberia and Sicily than the Sahara Desert
Sorry again for not being more specific. I meant more all of North Africa in general, specifically the southern desert regions. In both my Makedonia and Koinon Hellenon games Carthage controlled the entire western half of North Africa (except for one territory in the west that they inexplicably left completely alone) by the 250's BC. They didn't do a thing in Sicily.
4. Direct Carthage and Rome to war
We don't want to do this.QUOTE]
If that isn't what you want to do than that is fine by me. An event like the scripted interventions would be nice though.
[QUOTE=tk-421]5. Ptolemies and Seleucids fight each other more instead of conquering Arabia
I don't know that we want to direct them to fight each other, honestly. Even if we could.
Again, if this isn't what you want then ok.
6. Direct Parthia and the Seleucid Empire to constant wars that the Parthians will usually win
We certainly don't want to do this. The Parthians may or may not go to war with the Seleukids, and they may or may not win. All of that is ok with us, whatever path they choose.
Same response as for 4. and 5.
Again, sorry for not being more specific.
nikolai1962
03-07-2006, 03:18
We will never try to get the factions to expand as they did historically. We are not trying to recreate history here, but to rewrite it.
While I'm spamming this thread i might as well mention this.
I modded RTR a bit for myself to make the my fave romans a bit more difficult to play so i experimented a bit with trying to manipulate the ai. As mentioned the biggest single factor (or so it seemed to me at the time) was the rebels. The ai generally preferred to attack rebel regions first and generally picked the weakest first so you could tweak the direction they expanded a bit by changing the garrison sizes.
Similarly large rebel armies outside of the cities influenced them. For example moving a rebel army that was between the romans and the gauls next to aquileia instead made the gauls attack the romans sooner instead of getting into a war with the illyrians.
I've been mostly playing (oops i mean beta testing) EB in the east as I want to avoid seeing my romani until they they are all done and perfect so i haven't noticed how carthage does in Iberia with the way EB is set up but in rtr they always lost their holdings in spain pretty quick. To counter this i made their start army in iberia a bit stronger and moved it a bit closer to an iberian town and made the rebel garrison weaker so the start was still historical but carthage got an extra region much sooner. This made them survive much longer.
The only problem with not doing anything to tweak the ai in a historical direction is the big flaw with the original game vis a vis naval strategy. Often, Carthage doesn't defend it's overseas possessions even if it has a ton of troops available in africa.
The readme for the 1.5 patch mentions improved naval stuff so it may not be neccessary but scripting to make carthage (or other factions) *defend* their initial oversea regions better seems like a good idea to me. Not controlling how they expand but using scripting to help the weakness in the ai when the sea is involved.
Something like randomly spawning an army in sardinia if it is lost, max 3 times maybe as they'd give up eventually. Same with Sicily and Spain.
same thing with other factions who start with island or oversea possessions.
Oh yes another fun thing was to make the faction creator of certain regions be the faction that that region historically caused a war. For example i made the least accessible (to the gauls and iberians) iberian coastal region have rome as the faction creator. Eventually one of the ai factions would take it and usually it would rebel to rome sooner or later. I did the same with messana and pergamon for the same reasons to start historical type wars but at a random time.
(Also 1.5 seems to have a bunch of moddable diplomacy stuff to do with how much factions start off liking or hating each other.)
jedispongee
03-07-2006, 03:41
Oh yes another fun thing was to make the faction creator of certain regions be the faction that that region historically caused a war. For example i made the least accessible (to the gauls and iberians) iberian coastal region have rome as the faction creator. Eventually one of the ai factions would take it and usually it would rebel to rome sooner or later. I did the same with messana and pergamon for the same reasons to start historical type wars but at a random time.
(Also 1.5 seems to have a bunch of moddable diplomacy stuff to do with how much factions start off liking or hating each other.)
That last idea with faction creator is a very, very, very neat idea.
Teleklos Archelaou
03-07-2006, 04:48
But we have to be very careful with the faction creator because it also determines two other things (besides who it will rebel to):
1. Determines what type of culture the ambient, non-buildable buildings at the game's start will be (until the settlement is upgraded with a governor's building I believe). These are the houses in the city in 272BC, until it's upgraded. 2. Determines (by culture) what the strat-map icon of the city (not the *icons*, but the image of the city itself on the map) will look like prior to upgrading with the next core level building.
So if we set them in Iberia to roman, then the buildings look roman on the campaign map and the houses inside look roman too. Now, if you only play as roman, this is fine, as whoever is in control of the city will eventually 'level up' the core building and cause it to look like their faction's culture when they do that. It would be awesome if all of these things had individual 'triggers' that we could use. Alas...
oudysseos
03-07-2006, 09:34
I think both the pheonicians and the greeks were around for a long time though without ever getting into the imperial mindset. I think some of the history is based on particular cultural values. The carthaginians wanted money and trade whereas the romans seemed to have an enormous sense of superiority that made them want to assimilate everyone.
:)
This is absolutely true and to me one of the great conundrums of the classical world is the minimal impact that Carthage left in culture- no great literature, philosophy, science, not even works of history, collections of letters (a la Cicero) or really much of anything, even though Carthaginian power was great a century or two before Rome even managed to unify the itallian peninsula.
But again I think this is a case of the end result looking inevitable in hindsight. The 'imperial mindset' is partly attributable to unique individuals. How much of an imperial mindset did the Macedonians have before Phillip and Alexander? Pisistratus and Alcibiades were just 2 of many greeks just dripping with imperial mindset. Hannibal is a bit weird: his brother's judgement (knew how to win a victory but not how to use it) seems to have been accurate, but had Hannibal had better strategic vision a Barcid/Carthaginian empire is not inconceivable. There were lots of factors that contributed to Roman success; some were unique to Rome but I think that the things represented by the technology tree in EB were not unique. When I play a faction I like to think of myself as being there like a sort of deathless god-king maybe I'd better not go any further with this train of thought ( oohh dancing girls...)
In concrete terms for suggestions for the next patch/final release, I'd like to see it possible for the Sweboz, should they conquer, to learn to build paved roads (ever driven on the Autobahn?), and for the Carthags to train advanced troops in Corinth once they get that far (and have deveolped). In general blur even more the barbarian/civilised distinctions. I also like Nikolai's suggestions on farming.
Trithemius
03-07-2006, 11:02
When I play a faction I like to think of myself as being there like a sort of deathless god-king maybe I'd better not go any further with this train of thought ( oohh dancing girls...)
To be Romanocentric, perhaps the genius of the entire society? :)
In concrete terms for suggestions for the next patch/final release, I'd like to see it possible for the Sweboz, should they conquer, to learn to build paved roads (ever driven on the Autobahn?), and for the Carthags to train advanced troops in Corinth once they get that far (and have deveolped). In general blur even more the barbarian/civilised distinctions. I also like Nikolai's suggestions on farming.
I really like the idea of non-military reform (was that Nikolai as well; kudos to whoever it was). It'd be really neat if there was a way for the game to recognise the presence of specific sorts of buildings, so perhaps a governer of a city with an academy or an aqueduct or paved roads might think "hey, this stuff is pretty neat..." and activate them for their faction.
It'd be really neat if governments could be even more complicated - I have a bunch of kooky ideas but I don't really understand the capabilities of the scripting language so I am loathe to start babbling away building castles (empires!) in the sky as it were.
(Disciple of Tacitus I think I might be catching whatever bug it is that you have got (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?p=1085075#post1085075). ;))
scipione
03-07-2006, 15:23
Hi to all this is my first post on this forum.
I've tried this awsome mod and I really liked it, but I think, another time a great reality mod such as this has incurred in a great mistake.
I've noticed (also in the RTR mod) that there's a tendency by the modders to eliminate the 3 different factions of romans and also the senate.
This is an error I think, cause in this way the main aspect of the roman history(so real realism) is excluded from the game; I'm talking about the "CIVIL WAR", between senate and great families of the roman history.
For the rest I consider EB a good and a revolutionary mod, so I only suggest to reintroduce Senate and 2 or 3 roman families as factions to give a chance to the realism.
thanks for your work and bye
Teleklos Archelaou
03-07-2006, 18:02
scipione, that's a decision that is absolutely irreversable I'm afraid. We've managed to introduce Baktria, Epeiros, and the Yuezhi. Two of those three are definitely among the most popular factions to play in the mod now. Sorry you're not a fan of the move, but we hope you get some enjoyment from it still. Glad you downloaded it and hope you have more fun yet with it. :grin:
Disciple of Tacitus
03-07-2006, 18:57
Excuse me Oudysseos,
You mentioned ... "I have been looking at the maps that show where the various factions can build their type one and two governments."
Could u do me a favor and point me in that direction ....
much obilged...
The_White_Knight
03-07-2006, 19:08
They can be found here (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=58963). :listen:
Disciple of Tacitus
03-07-2006, 19:08
From Trithemius...(Disciple of Tacitus I think I might be catching whatever bug it is that you have got (https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?p=1085075#post1085075). ;))[/QUOTE]
O Happy Days!~:cheers:
Guys, I'm really digging this thread. Unfortunately, work calls. But when I get back, I'm going to give a serious read to the ideas floating around here. :inquisitive:
Fontenelle
03-07-2006, 21:44
Is there ANY way to reduce the number of brigands spawning?
Crowd control in Iberia is an exercise in futility…
:wall:
oudysseos
03-07-2006, 23:33
New Idea-
I was thinking about the Marian reforms and how they probably weren't quite so sudden, but rather the formalization of a long process, i.e. the increasing urbanization of Rome meant a commensurate decrease in the 'family farmer' class that customarily provided the bulk of the legions. The Gracchi attempted to deal with this problem and got lynched for their pains, I think that Marius just put the establishment seal of approval on something inevitable.
What I was thinking is that this process is linked to agricultural development, which is something that does exist in EB. Therefore, why not link military reforms to the agricultural dev tree as well as to population levels, MIC and gov levels. Specifically in Rome, advanced legions shouldn't be available until you reach latifundia (sp?), creating an urban poor/landless class to provide manpower for a lifetime professional army. I think a case can be made for similar triggers in most factions to mark the change from citizen soldiers to professional army careers.
If you have already done this, then let me simply say I am not worthy O great ones.
Crowd control in Iberia was an exercise in futility for a VERY long time. What we need is some way to make them stop cropping up.
Finding some way to do cooler things with the rebel spawns would be nice. Is it possible to alter spawn army size and frequency from province to province? Can you decrease the frequency based on the amount of time a province is controlled or by the presence of certain buildings?
And related to this subject, any chance of decreasing random spawns in favor of major rebellions, which could be triggered by certain things (eg, Carthage hires no mercs, so all the mercs who travelled there looking for employment revolt up and down the seacoast--not quite realistic, but better than citizen militia armies). Or, even better, if you could detect the recruitment of machimoi in the Egyptian armies, you could trigger large machimoi rebellions. That could also help curb Ptolemaic expansion.
Trithemius
03-08-2006, 01:00
New Idea-
I was thinking about the Marian reforms and how they probably weren't quite so sudden, but rather the formalization of a long process, i.e. the increasing urbanization of Rome meant a commensurate decrease in the 'family farmer' class that customarily provided the bulk of the legions. The Gracchi attempted to deal with this problem and got lynched for their pains, I think that Marius just put the establishment seal of approval on something inevitable.
What I was thinking is that this process is linked to agricultural development, which is something that does exist in EB. Therefore, why not link military reforms to the agricultural dev tree as well as to population levels, MIC and gov levels. Specifically in Rome, advanced legions shouldn't be available until you reach latifundia (sp?), creating an urban poor/landless class to provide manpower for a lifetime professional army. I think a case can be made for similar triggers in most factions to mark the change from citizen soldiers to professional army careers.
If you have already done this, then let me simply say I am not worthy O great ones.
I think this is a very good idea, and would go so far as to suggest that the same thing happens for the "Polybian" reforms.
It seems the development of an increasingly professionalised army, that was recruited from an increasingly wider set of social classes can be represented by using the development of agricultural improvements (and the rustic estates and latifundia improvements) combined with a value derived from the number of territories controlled to determine when the conditions for a "reformator" character should be in place.
Basically, the Polybian reforms could be triggered by a certain number of rustic estates, and a certain number of territories conquered (or perhaps specific territories - such as Italy + Sicily). This would then enable Polybian hastati/principes/triarii and allow there recruitment in more Italian provinces.
The Marian reforms could then be triggered by a certain number of latifundia, and an even larger number of territories (possibly with less specific territories? or perhaps - if it is possible - basing it when territory that is a certain distance from the capital is controlled?) and would allow the reformata troops, auxilia, and recruitment in all type ii-governed rovinces.
I realise this might be extremely simplified in historical terms, but it does make it more about systemic variables within the social, economic, and military structures of Roman society and less about arbitrary dates and 'great men'. I also think that it would play upon the "imperial overstretch" aspect of EB - which I have encountered while playing some hitherto rather successful Roman campaigns. This could easily provide a catalyst for (firstly) a more professional army recruited from Italian citizens of appropriate class and (later) a fully professional army recruited from all citizens.
Trithemius
03-08-2006, 01:03
And related to this subject, any chance of decreasing random spawns in favor of major rebellions, which could be triggered by certain things (eg, Carthage hires no mercs, so all the mercs who travelled there looking for employment revolt up and down the seacoast--not quite realistic, but better than citizen militia armies). Or, even better, if you could detect the recruitment of machimoi in the Egyptian armies, you could trigger large machimoi rebellions. That could also help curb Ptolemaic expansion.
I sure hope they can do this in MTW2. That way if you sign a peace treaty with a long time rival and demobilise your army, part of it can wander off and try and extort the Pope. :)
[/off-topic]
nemesisvsbrad
03-08-2006, 01:12
I want my spies and assassins cooperate to kill enemy generals. Probably groups of assassins and spies could be trained and if the counter spy the enemy has is weak they could terrorize the whole town without my knowledge. Now all spies can do is open the gates during assault and cause unrest. I want full use of spies like really they had been. Also I want the enemy generals to have their own psyche. If outnumbered and hopeless they should surrender instead of being beseiged. Chinggis khan would slaughter whole population of a city and the next would surrender because they didn't want to share the same fate. Extermination should be very effective method to demoralize the enemy. I dont think it's realistic a weak and waning group of people to resist a large number of roman armies. I want the enemy generals to assasinate their lord if they have been defeated several times. we all know that when one country is in deep trouble the leading citizens propose different policy and infighting take place and whoever wins pursue his policy. I want some gaullic warlord to come to me and offer his daughter and give me 90% of his treasure with his all cavalry so I can have him as friend and use his muscle instead of creating another roman town. I am not interested in gaining more land anymore. Of course I could hesitate and hang him but I would prefer give him large amount of present and give him a seat in the Senate to make his fellow warlord think twice. I don't like just keep fighting and want some dirty politics get involved in EB and remember that money talks. I would assume 50% of gaullic warlords would agree to be interested in the title "Friend of Rome". When Vercingetorix shows up I want to capture him and keep him in Rome as war trophy to have more influence bonus. I want to capture good quality blacksmiths from Gaul and bring them in Rome to produce fine armory and stuff. Chinggis did keep people useful to him. Chinggis prefered his war horses and slaughtered 30 million Chinese people to have more grazing ground. I want my equistrains to demand more grazing ground from me and if I dont provide the result would be weak roman cavalry. Maybe I want something that the game can't handle but anyway my expectations are high. EB has already shocked me greatly.
Teleklos Archelaou
03-08-2006, 01:45
Yeah, I think you answered your questions already brad. We just can't do a lot of the things with the game engine the way it is now, and we have to stay in bounds here. Interesting ideas though.
BTW Caesar did the same thing as Genghis Khan there too. When moving through Greece he certainly made examples of some cities and others capitulated quickly (they had been on Pompey's side). I suspect this has happened countless times with countless other armies as well.
my opinion is more pictures on the unit card en better building cards a beater building browser that will help and its better to make generals and maybe a more power to the family tree that you can see you most make a son or sumting like that and more fractions
Teleklos Archelaou
03-08-2006, 21:38
There will definitely be more pictures for the buildings and units. For our next full release of the open beta we hope to have almost all of them ironed out. The building end of it is something I'll be working on a lot in the coming weeks.
and a have just a segestion the pyramids etc why you dont let it see on the campene map that will be a + and the effects from the pyramids by exsempele
+5 law +1 morelle in the hole empire
nemesisvsbrad
03-10-2006, 01:51
"rationing" was something I find very cool. Also what noticed was that mililtary ports share the same category as buildings. You can train units in a city but you can recruit mercs in ports. In reality, roman armies built ports everynight to prevent night attack. Using this idea as base, when player clicks "End Turn" button, the armies could build ports automatically to stay. Little wagons transport goods between cities and these wagons could deliver military supply to feed the army in ports. What I am trying to say is that if there's no supply I want my generals get killed or mutiny take place. Decimation, or slaughtering a quarter of my army would create a realistic approach to the EB. This could slow down roman expansion due to supply issues. Hungry roman soldiers weren't disciplened enough to conquer any land I believe. Well protected supply line that connected by roads was something brought victories in ancient times. Also I don't want any captains to lead my armies. EB should disable this. Rome had only 2 consuls at a time. These consuls could conduct war, no one else. It makes roman expansion pretty slow and create a realistic environment. Another thing I want in EB is "independent treasury". Let me explain this. I want each city has its own treasury and its own conscious to expand. This way one of the cities could betray the senate and join the greeks or carthage. If I overtax them or run dry their men in military service, they must be losing men (taxpayers to them), and money (vital to existence). we know that sicily was switching sides during roma carthage wars. In RTW all cities feels the same and it's boring after a while. I want the cities exchange envoys and create alliance in secret to betray me IF I WASN'T treating them as I should be. Remember each city wants to expand and prolonged war dry the economy and men. If I continue war like 5 years I could end up having no cities. To prevent this I must USE spies and assassins to eliminate the leading enemy folks and persuade the traitors to join me and strike the enemy hard and quick to finish the war. Otherwise I lose everything I had. I want player to be on his toe all the time. I remember I was playing THRACE last year and each battle was worth and every men was valueable. Losing a single battle threatened the very existense of my faction. I enjoyed that game SOOOOOOO MUCH. I conclude myself like this.
I want armies to be lead by Consuls, not governers and armies must stay in ports when player hits "END TURN". Supply wagon must be uninterrupted otherwise half of my army starve do death. If I overtax my cities they must do some harm so I must be careful with taxing issue. Wars have to be planned and executed with GREAT CARE. I am tired of "JUST ANOTHER BATTLE", I want battles that so decisive could ruin my whole campaign. Winning a battle must be well rewarded. When Caeser come from Gaul he was so rich. Wars must profitable, not another time consuming headache. Here's what I want, if I capture "X" city, I send slaves and looted goods to Rome to sell. If they had been stolen by bandits on the road, I just wasted my men and time. The city is worth nothing because all it's goods had been plundered and able bodied men and women were sold but money is stolen on the road. That creates highway security problem. Now, roman expansion is way too quick because cities have men and they don't cost much. Most battles are insignificant and this is one reason i am always searching good mods to play. Romans are the marvel of ancient time. Excuse my improper English. I wish I could express my opinion clearly. ROMA VICTOR!!!!!
Sir Edward
03-10-2006, 03:30
I am confused Nemesisvsbrad by your post, did you mean to say fort when you said port?
nemesisvsbrad
03-10-2006, 04:58
engrish probrem, yeah when I said port I meant fort :embarassed: :oops:
Trithemius
03-10-2006, 10:52
I seem to recall someone in another thread mentioning that when cities rebel they have to rebel to -someones- control. Is it impossible to have all cities rebel to Eleutheroi control? This would mean that recently conquered cities would not revert to the original owners - but I think this can be rationalised as the locals reasserting their independence.
An expansion on this: if it is possible it might be good to allow homelands (type i governed provinces) to revert to the original owner, but to force all other provinces to revert to independent (Eleutheroi) control?
Teutobod II
03-10-2006, 13:02
Yeah, I think you answered your questions already brad. We just can't do a lot of the things with the game engine the way it is now, and we have to stay in bounds here. Interesting ideas though.
BTW Caesar did the same thing as Genghis Khan there too. When moving through Greece he certainly made examples of some cities and others capitulated quickly (they had been on Pompey's side). I suspect this has happened countless times with countless other armies as well.
is it possible for besieged cities according to their (or the general´s) loyalty to surrender randomly before the max siegetime has expired ?
a scroll could pop up offering their capitulation and if you accept it could be handled like a successful bribe ?
...or offer a randsom to lift the seige
maybe it could still be possibel to plunder the town but being negative to your reputation
Teleklos Archelaou
03-10-2006, 15:18
I don't think there's any way to do that Teutobod. We would like to have surrenders of towns (affected by the town's loyalty or the general's traits or whatever), but it's just not something the system gives us a way to alter. If anyone found such a way, we'd love to hear it though. We have not found a way to insert a single scroll with options to choose - it's something RTW didn't feel the need to include (you'll have to remember that scripts weren't even designed for the campaign - they just were put in to help take the player through the prologue).
Greek_fire19
03-10-2006, 19:47
Is it possible to have a descrption of each province or city in the game somewhere? Just a little brief thing, whether it's rich or poor quality land, an interesting fact or detail, information about any particular nationalist sentiment, just a little something to make you feel more connected to the game world.
I don't know how to implement this in game, but it feels like despite all the information about the units, buildings etc, there's not a lot of info about the land itself.
For example, you might have 'Nisa: Nisa is at the very heart of the Parthian homeland. It is a land of deep, fertile valleys and high, arid mountains. It's vast wilderness areas experience frequent bouts of extreme weather, and the locals complain that they must sleep on the roofs of their houses for much of the year due to the extreme heat, often touching 40 or even 50 degrees celcius.
As this region is deep within parthia, and the people here consider their nomadic parthian culture and independence to be at the very heart of their identity, foreign rulers cannot expect these to be the most loyal of subjects.'
Or something like that. I dont know if this could be implemented through a script that make province descriptions pop up in the General's traits box or if they could be made to appear in the province description thing that pops up when you mouse over the province. If it was possible in any way though, I'd love to see it done.
Malrubius
03-10-2006, 21:59
If someone would write them, we could give the province/settlement descriptions to the governor of the province. This would be great and is something we've been wanting, to have certain provinces influence the generals who inhabit them, but it would take a lot of research.
Maybe it could include a short history of what historical events happened here during our timeline, what battles, etc.
nikolai1962
03-11-2006, 11:48
It'd be really neat if governments could be even more complicated - I have a bunch of kooky ideas but I don't really understand the capabilities of the scripting language so I am loathe to start babbling away building castles (empires!) in the sky as it were.
Yeah me too. The problem is the game has a limit of 64 building blocks and EB is already at 64. However, there might be ways to compact some of the existing blocks to free up some slots or squeeze extra buildings into the existing slots. Time will tell. I think you should babble though as even if only 10% of the ideas here are possible it would still be cool.
This is an error I think, cause in this way the main aspect of the roman history(so real realism) is excluded from the game; I'm talking about the "CIVIL WAR", between senate and great families of the roman history
I think the old roman factions becoming new factions is better but it would be great if the old mtw style civil wars could be added back somehow with scripting.
Is there ANY way to reduce the number of brigands spawning
You can mod the frequency in rtw 1.5.
(Completely irrelevant but i've been testing EB building stuff in 1.5 and deleted all the recruitment lines for everyone but me so i wouldn't be hassled by the ai. lol, you should see the huge swarms of pirate fleets you get when the ai isn't fighting them because they can't build ships. I couldn't move anywhere by sea at all without getting attacked 3 or 4 times a turn.)
Finding some way to do cooler things with the rebel spawns would be nice. Is it possible to alter spawn army size and frequency from province to province? Can you decrease the frequency based on the amount of time a province is controlled or by the presence of certain buildings?
And related to this subject, any chance of decreasing random spawns in favor of major rebellions, which could be triggered by certain things (eg, Carthage hires no mercs, so all the mercs who travelled there looking for employment revolt up and down the seacoast--not quite realistic, but better than citizen militia armies). Or, even better, if you could detect the recruitment of machimoi in the Egyptian armies, you could trigger large machimoi rebellions. That could also help curb Ptolemaic expansion
The brigand type rebels all work off the same frequency i think but the brigand ones are really boring imo and in my ideal game they'd be removed and replaced with script-based major rebellions from time to time. It would be even better if these rebellions were influenced by the sort of things you mention. I really like the idea of faction-specific problems an the machimoi thing would be a perfect candidate for the ptolemaic faction problem.
SwordsMaster
03-12-2006, 17:45
Hey
I was thinking about how war declarations work. Here is the deal:
- Sneak attack. You march you army into a neutral army or besiege their cities with no warning.
- You declare war, then march your armies, etc..
If you do not declare war first, the faction leader gets some sort "not trusted" trait that will take -5 to influence +1 management or something.
You "declare" war by having a diplomat in your enemy's territory when you attack one of their armies. If you do no, it is a sneaky attack.
Cheers
LorDBulA
03-12-2006, 19:14
Or, even better, if you could detect the recruitment of machimoi in the Egyptian armies, you could trigger large machimoi rebellions. That could also help curb Ptolemaic expansion
Mhh this sounds interesting. Could you elaborate? Unfortunately i know nothing about machimoi rebellions.
Well, the Ptolemies didn't recruit many native troops for their armies until the run-up to Raphia in 217. The native phalanx troops performed so well against the Seleukid phalanx that they got a bit more ambitious for their own share of power, and even began to contemplate throwing the Makedonians out entirely. Starting in the last years of the third century, and continuing off and on afterwards, Egyptian rebellions would be kicking off, with veteran machimoi soldiers providing the military core to the armies.
LorDBulA
03-13-2006, 07:50
Ok but what would cause this rebellions?
Trithemius
03-13-2006, 09:43
Ok but what would cause this rebellions?
Military reforms? Triggered by army size/territorial extent or a certain number of high level MICs being constructed in Ptolemian homelands?
nikolai1962
03-14-2006, 01:32
I don't spose it's possible to test for what type of unit is being built other than infantry, cavalry etc.
If you broke down ptolemaic recruitment somehow so you had "greek" barracks for the greek units and "egyptian" barracks for the native machamoi troops and then make it really difficult for the ptolemaic player to survive without building at least some of these barracks. Something like that maybe.
PantsToucher
03-14-2006, 04:12
The cities on the Greek peninsula always seem to get depopulated quickly; maybe add some more to their starting population.
QwertyMIDX
03-14-2006, 04:28
is it possible for besieged cities according to their (or the general´s) loyalty to surrender randomly before the max siegetime has expired ?
a scroll could pop up offering their capitulation and if you accept it could be handled like a successful bribe ?
...or offer a randsom to lift the seige
maybe it could still be possibel to plunder the town but being negative to your reputation
We can change a cities ownership, maybe we could do something with this..
i got a new idea wel meby not new but
you now you can make 1 bulding at a city but why 1 when you can make 2 or 3 etc
This is a limitation of the game system; we cannot change it to allow the construction of multiple buildings at the same time. At least, I think that is what you were suggesting. :dizzy2:
Malrubius
03-15-2006, 18:38
You can adjust the order of multiple buildings in the queue by clicking and dragging, however. So if you have a 20-turn building being constructed, you can start construction on a shrine and then drag it in front of the government building to get it built in a few turns. Then the 20-turn building will resume construction when the quick building is finished.
I don't know if this is the right thread to post suggestions about traits but here goes. I've always thought barbarian generals should get more traits that make the general and his retiue stronger in battle while Roman (and many other factions) generals should get fewer. A barbarian general would generally be in his position because of his physical prowess and ability in battle whearas there is no reason why a Roman General should be more capable or last longer in battle than other soldiers (other than being well equiped). Celtic sources clearly show that the job of a leader was demonstrate personal valour in the field. In addition, Roman generalls should get more traits that make them better generals given that barbarian factions often had more limited ideas about soldiering (their martial culture usually being based on raids). Clearly the only way to make barbarian generals better in combat is to increase their experience and the HP of the general so I think barbarian generals should get more traits that increase these. In Celtic and Germanic 'hero culture' a war leader was expected to fight whearas the job of a Roman general was to command.
oudysseos
03-15-2006, 23:53
This is a limitation of the game system; we cannot change it to allow the construction of multiple buildings at the same time. At least, I think that is what you were suggesting. :dizzy2:
You could do it with 0 build times though, couldn't you?. Some buildings are actual infrastructure that take time to build- city walls, roads or sewers, fr'instance, but some kinda more represent civic organisations and systems for which you could make a case for simultaneous builds- education, religion, grain supplies. Actually I think that the build tree is fast enough, but maybe you could consider making the first level of religion, education, law enforcement have a zero build time, with longer build times for subsequent levels of development. What I mean is it takes years to build a Pantheon or a Cathedral, but I could get a prayer-meeting together tomorrow. The same applies to Universities and discussion groups.
Roads, however,are too fast- two turns I think for the first level of road? That's quick. I also think that roads should cost upkeep every turn, if that's possible. If they're not surveyed and regraded etc on a regular basis then you get massive chariot-swallowing potholes.
Actually most buildings should cost some upkeep- and that'd be another way to keep incomes in line. PLaying as KH I have a massive income if I choose not to spend it every turn. Is it possible to attach a per-turn cost to buildings the same as for units?
Trithemius
03-16-2006, 00:10
You could do it with 0 build times though, couldn't you?. Some buildings are actual infrastructure that take time to build- city walls, roads or sewers, fr'instance, but some kinda more represent civic organisations and systems for which you could make a case for simultaneous builds- education, religion, grain supplies. Actually I think that the build tree is fast enough, but maybe you could consider making the first level of religion, education, law enforcement have a zero build time, with longer build times for subsequent levels of development. What I mean is it takes years to build a Pantheon or a Cathedral, but I could get a prayer-meeting together tomorrow. The same applies to Universities and discussion groups.
Yeah, all the Stoics needed was a porch, and Plato just had a grove of trees! :)
You could do it with 0 build times though, couldn't you?. Some buildings are actual infrastructure that take time to build- city walls, roads or sewers, fr'instance, but some kinda more represent civic organisations and systems for which you could make a case for simultaneous builds- education, religion, grain supplies. Actually I think that the build tree is fast enough, but maybe you could consider making the first level of religion, education, law enforcement have a zero build time, with longer build times for subsequent levels of development. What I mean is it takes years to build a Pantheon or a Cathedral, but I could get a prayer-meeting together tomorrow. The same applies to Universities and discussion groups.
The thing is that though you could set up a shrine in a few days, for it to have any beneficial effect would take time, and thats what the time for construction is taking into effect (or at least thats how I see it). Though I do think that one of the greatest restrictions of the RTW engine (and all TW engines) is that you cannot build more than one building (or recruit more than unit) at any one time. Damn you, CA! What are your reasonings! Ah well, EB offers enough enjoyment for me to get past that stuff.
Foot
Only in a few cases does a "building" in EB represent an actual building. In most cases these are abstractions forced upon us by the game system. Anything you might think would be applicable to a 0-turn build time likely falls under the "abstraction" category.
I sincerely doubt we will ever see 0-turn build times for anything at all within EB.
oudysseos
03-16-2006, 07:45
As I said I think that the developement of cities is fast enough in gameplay terms- I was just wondering if the 0 build time trick would work for buildings too.
oudysseos
03-16-2006, 07:46
But what about my idea for upkeep costs on buildings? Is that even possible?
As I said I think that the developement of cities is fast enough in gameplay terms- I was just wondering if the 0 build time trick would work for buildings too.
0 turn build time doesn't work. I tried that some time ago in vanilla, I made a couple of buildings have a 0 turn build time ... the buildings were never constructed.
The queue was full, and constructed buildings fine, except the 0-turn ones, they would simply remain in the queue forever.
Oh, and, I love this mod.:2thumbsup:
fallen851
03-17-2006, 01:58
How bout creating a script (if possible) so that when a player blockades a port, that player recieves the trade money from that port would generally get? This would make navies profitable, since their only purpose seems to be transporting troops, now navies could be used to collect cash.
Trithemius
03-17-2006, 03:03
I'd quite like to have some what of abandoning a settlement to the Eleutheroi - thereby establishing a "buffer state" or just letting local political factions take over.
This is something I wish I could have done during my "bashing" campaigns in Gaul when I was not ready to actually colonise the place yet.
I think you've already had a debate about diplomacy but it wouldn't hurt. How about you'd put a rule into the script for ai starting to sue for peace after you've taken over a few of their cities? I really don't enjoy it when i have to walk all over the seleucid empire or chartage just for them to leave me alone...
Well I think it is best to release the 1.5 port as soon as possible. If there's any lesson to be had from the open beta it's that it's MUCH easier to fix and improve when the community gets its dirty little hands and heads on it.
And also, since 1.5 is so different from 1.2, most suggestions made now would not be valid given the 1.5 situation. The new battlefield and strat map AI changes a lot of things.
Really the only thing that I like to remind the team given the 1.5 environment, are the new bug fixes, namely the charge bonus, amphibious invasion (no land bridges please) and "sword on non-phalanx spearmen" (feel free to use the regular swordsmen skeleton for the sword secondary). And oh yeah, if you take advantage of the now quantified anti-cav bonus, you can get your Triarii to fight infantry with swords and cavalry with spears in that nice smart way that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
We have been, and remain, hard at work on trying to port this mod to 1.5. We continue to be dedicated to solving current problems in the meantime.
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