Non aligned factions and game play

[HFox]

I really like the work here and I am fairly new to playing with this mod. A couple of ideas on the non aligned factions and a question on game play.

Factions.

1. Effect of aggressive expansion. When you attack one tribe....why do they all turn hostile? Surely a more realistic effect would be a local change in attitude, not always hostile. Tribe C may actually like you attacking tribe d and tribe y in the lower nile won't give 2 hoots about you attacking tribe g in Spain.

2. Coalitions - if say you attack several non aligned factions in a row, could several of the remaining ones close to you react to preserve themselves. The closest ones band together to fight you. In effect form a hostile nation of their own with one intent, break you before they themselves are broken.

3. Why do independents not try and join your cause, I know this may be difficult technically but it may not be outside the realms of possibility for faction k to see your position and see it attractive for them to join your cause as a protectorate/client/subject state.

Game play

1. My one bugbear with this mod is time between actions. Loading any game end, battle start / finish takes 2-3 minutes on my PC and its not a bad one. This does reduce the fun of playing this mod. Any suggestions for speeding up redundent game time or is there another consideration I have know understanding of. (xp sp2, intel p4 2.2ghz, 512 ram. geforce3 ti200)

[Foot]

1. The slave faction is an umbrella faction and covers all non-playable factions in the game. This means that if you attack one rebel province all rebel provinces are at war with you, as they all share the same diplomacy. This is hardcoded and nothing can be done.

2. Script work could probably do something with this, but I'm not sure and it wouldn't be a very good representation either. Again, hardcodes get in the way.

3. Can be done sometimes. If a province rebels from its faction owner it can join your faction (if your faction is the culture creator).

Gameplay
1. To make the loading of the game faster, RAM is the must another 512MB of ram should make it faster. For campaign turns to go faster you will really need a far heftier graphics card (don't ask why!). I have a Geforce 6600 256mb and my turns take about 30 secs.

Foot

[Oleo]

Gameplay
1. To make the loading of the game faster, RAM is the must another 512MB of ram should make it faster. For campaign turns to go faster you will really need a far heftier graphics card (don't ask why!). I have a Geforce 6600 256mb and my turns take about 30 secs.

Foot

One turn of all the AI takes 30 secs for you? Wow, nice. Ive got a ati 1900xt 512mb and it takes 1 minute. Dont you think its more logical that its dependant on processor type/speed and maybe memory and videocard.

My specs: AMD 3700+ oc to 4000+, 2 gig ram, 1900xt videocard.

[Foot]

Trust me it is entirely based on graphics card (pretty much). I was having campaign turn times of 4mins +. I thought that upping my RAM from 512MB to 1024MB would significantly alter that so I went out and brought some, but it made absolutely no difference to campaign turn times (it might have knocked of 30 secs or so but not much).

I gave up playing EB and later on went out to buy a new GFX card to replace my aging 5200 128mb. I brought a 6600, and decided that would try seeing how RTW looked like with this new GFX card. I started up the EB campaign and my first turn whooshed past at about 1 min or so.

Of course now I'm playing on the 1.5 build of EB so its come down to a good 30secs.

Foot

[Oleo]

Trust me it is entirely based on graphics card (pretty much). I was having campaign turn times of 4mins +. I thought that upping my RAM from 512MB to 1024MB would significantly alter that so I went out and brought some, but it made absolutely no difference to campaign turn times (it might have knocked of 30 secs or so but not much).

I gave up playing EB and later on went out to buy a new GFX card to replace my aging 5200 128mb. I brought a 6600, and decided that would try seeing how RTW looked like with this new GFX card. I started up the EB campaign and my first turn whooshed past at about 1 min or so.

Of course now I'm playing on the 1.5 build of EB so its come down to a good 30secs.

Foot

Thats funny, strange, but funny. :juggle2:

[The_Mark]

I gave up playing EB and later on went out to buy a new GFX card to replace my aging 5200 128mb.--
You call that aged? :inquisitive:

There has to be something else at play also. Campaign turns don't take that much time with my old and faithful 64Mb GeForce4 MX440. Or then I'm just used to overall sluggishness.

[Zaknafien]

myturns only take about 30secs also.. got one of the newer ATIs on my current laptop, a shitty Dell I got about 5 months ago for about 2500. I just ordered a new Alienware laptop for about 3500, which should be alot nicer, ill test the turn times when i get it.

[Wardo]

My turns take 30 seconds too, but they become slower proportionally to the number of turns played in one seat.

If I play 80 turns in one go, the 79th will take longer than the first. It also depends on the amount of armies, agents and size of the factions around the world.

So the 80th turn at 50BC will take longer than the 80th turn at 230BC.

[NeoSpartan]

My turns take 30 seconds too, but they become slower proportionally to the number of turns played in one seat.

If I play 80 turns in one go, the 79th will take longer than the first. It also depends on the amount of armies, agents and size of the factions around the world.

So the 80th turn at 50BC will take longer than the 80th turn at 230BC.

The same thing happens to me.
But add to add to that, since I have a lattop with an AMD processor, it gets REALLY hot after 3hrs of gameplay. As a result turns start to take a lot longer and scrolling across the campain map is also SLOW. (when that happens I know that I have played a lil' too much for one day)

[Tellos Athenaios]

Well, the campaign part has pretty much to do with graphics: in fact as much as to make CA think about switches to turn some effects on and off. So to speed up things you could simply decide to switch various effects off.

Anyway, on the subject of graphics cards: more memory on it doesn't equal better, some graphics cards (in any case some NVIDIA's do) simply 'borrow' the memory from the RAM for example.

[Simmons]

Anyway, on the subject of graphics cards: more memory on it doesn't equal better, some graphics cards (in any case some NVIDIA's do) simply 'borrow' the memory from the RAM for example.I was under the impression that only onboard graphics "cards" are like that even lower end cards have there own RAM.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Ah well, I got my info a while back when Age of Empires III wasn't released yet but there were much ongoing discussions of graphics cards compatibility.

It seems as if the info has gone towards this place:
http://forum.agecommunity.com/ibb/posts.aspx?postID=72964&postRepeater1-p=1

[Geoffrey S]

There is a noticeable memory leak in RTW that causes the game to run slower as a campaign progresses (if in one sitting), perhaps that's giving some trouble. I think it was bad under 1.2 on anything lower than 512 MB RAM, but it's still present (in a milder form) under 1.5.

[HFox]

I found the

eb-speedup-x2 mod helps a lot

it seems to have cut down the end of turn waiting by half.

Many thanks

****

1. The slave faction is an umbrella faction and covers all non-playable factions in the game. This means that if you attack one rebel province all rebel provinces are at war with you, as they all share the same diplomacy. This is hardcoded and nothing can be done.

This is a shame....but understandable.

2. Script work could probably do something with this, but I'm not sure and it wouldn't be a very good representation either. Again, hardcodes get in the way.

Can you explain why it wouldnt be?

3. Can be done sometimes. If a province rebels from its faction owner it can join your faction (if your faction is the culture creator).

Not those allied to another faction except the non playable factions.

Gameplay
1. To make the loading of the game faster, RAM is the must another 512MB of ram should make it faster. For campaign turns to go faster you will really need a far heftier graphics card (don't ask why!). I have a Geforce 6600 256mb and my turns take about 30 secs.

Ive just ordered a load of ram and a better video card. Will see if there is any incremental improvement from these later today. :)

[HFox]

OK

The mod had a significant effect, additional memory and upgraded video card likewise.

This now makes the mod eminently more useable and friendly.

As you can see from the time between posts......a large improvement on speed.

FYI

did have
2.2ghz processor
500mb ram
agp ti 200 video card

now have
2 1/1 gb ram
7800 video card

Improvement.....about 400% in terms of time reduction at move end, battle start end, game opening/closing.

Cost...£300.