My impressions of the Europa Barborum Mod.

Hello people, I downloaded and installed this yesterday, and this is what i think:

For starters, if you play Bactria, why the dickens does one need to watch the computer players fighting over britian? It's not like you will ever get there. It's irrelevant. Hell, it's not like you'll ever even get past asia minor. The slowness of the in-between-turn-times is enough to take care of that. How about only revealing that part of the map when you reach it?

Also, what's the point in owning a city if it doesn't produce any money! What the deuce is up with a city of 400000 producing less money than a city of 200 people? This fatal flaw ruins it for me. You need a seperate army going around, which you can't afford, and exterminate the citizens of your biggest cities every generation, which is a chore, not fun at all, aside from being unrealistic.

Compared to RTW, playing this feels like an office job.

I'll give you one thing, it simulates realism, but with unrealistic measures to do so. :furious3:

Thanks.

Sorry to be such an asshole! :beam:

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For starters, if you play Bactria, why the dickens does one need to watch the computer players fighting over britian? It's not like you will ever get there. It's irrelevant. Hell, it's not like you'll ever even get past asia minor. The slowness of the in-between-turn-times is enough to take care of that. How about only revealing that part of the map when you reach it?

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Try toggling fog of war off, and subsequently toggling the "Follow AI movement" button.

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Also, what's the point in owning a city if it doesn't produce any money! What the deuce is up with a city of 400000 producing less money than a city of 200 people? This fatal flaw ruins it for me. You need a seperate army going around, which you can't afford, and exterminate the citizens of your biggest cities every generation, which is a chore, not fun at all, aside from being unrealistic.

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I've never seen anyone own a city of 400,000 people, but the bigger a city, the more they have to pay for the army upkeep. So take for instance Baktra (which is pretty big, with 4,000 people at the beginning of the game), and then Kophen (which is a lot smaller, around 1,000 people). Compare these two, you notice that Kophen pays little in army upkeep, and Baktra pays a lot. This is an RTW feature, not an EB one.

Yes, both your problems aren't connected with EBI (except for the slow turns - sorry). The first is a problem with the fog of war being toggled off. I don't know why that happened, it shouldn't as default. Open the console command (using the "tilde" key as standard - thats the key directly to the left of the "1" key) and type in toggle_fow. Then open the options menu -> game options and turn off "watch AI moves" (or whatever it is called).

The second issue is the stupid way RTW handles income. I'm suprised you never spotted it in vanilla RTW. The bigger the city the bigger the slice of a faction's expenditure it foots the bill for. A city will therefore appear to make less money, when in reality it is making far more (more people more tax). We don't know why CA decided to do this, we just have to live with it. To see a settlements true income you need to open up the settlement info scroll and go to the trade summary screen (this won't show tax unfortunately). If you don't want a city to be losing money then disband your army and use the profit to upgrade your infrastructure, particular that focusing on trade and so forth. Or you can use your standing army as it is and conquer a province or two to help pay for an army.

Its humourous to see that your two complaints against EB are in fact against RTW.

Happy Gaming!

Foot

you can leave off Fog of War and just unselect "watch AI movement". also, [spacebar] will speed up movement on the map...just dont try and move more than you can in 1 turn or you will get really bad lag until you end the turn.

You can also get around that lag by taking any unit out from a settlement and put it back in.

Wait, so as your cities get bigger their income doesn't really decrease? they are just having to pay a larger portion of army upkeep? wow, i never knew this. i just assumed that for some reason larger populations caused a decrease in income.

One good thing I can certainly say about EB is that it teaches patience.:sweatdrop:

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Originally Posted by Grriffon

Wait, so as your cities get bigger their income doesn't really decrease? they are just having to pay a larger portion of army upkeep? wow, i never knew this. i just assumed that for some reason larger populations caused a decrease in income.

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Just open the settlement details scroll and have a closer look at income and expenses. That makes some things clear.
I guess you never listened to the advisor, huh? :laugh4:

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Originally Posted by bovi

You can also get around that lag by taking any unit out from a settlement and put it back in.

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ive found for me to move a spy or a diplomat one space, and its fine after that.

ok, i didn't know about the city finances thing. this is a great mod.

i've just been playing it for 6 hours.

:yes:

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Originally Posted by flamingcookbook

ok, i didn't know about the city finances thing. this is a great mod.

i've just been playing it for 6 hours.

:yes:

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Spend some more time and you will love it even more!

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Originally Posted by Grriffon

Wait, so as your cities get bigger their income doesn't really decrease? they are just having to pay a larger portion of army upkeep? wow, i never knew this. i just assumed that for some reason larger populations caused a decrease in income.

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Actually, the larger populations technically cause an increase in the income because of the fact more people are paying taxes. However, the army upkeep increases faster than the tax increase, so you actually end up losing money after your city reaches a certain size. Nevertheless, as one of your cities increases in size, and soaks up more of the upkeep, the other cities begin to make more money, so having populous cities is always the best, that is if you can keep them on very high taxes without the city rebelling.

About the first impressions: The first time I played EB, I though the game had amazing graphic and yet grotesquely screwed up unit balance. The missile units caused almost no damage, the battles always ended in huge, chaotic blob of soldiers who refused to rout and ended up fighting for hours and barely dying. I actually had a battle one time, where I had just one unit of Cordinau Orca (60 men on Large Unit Size)and a 300 men Getic army facing me. I thought it was hopeless, as the Getic army was not made up of levies, but of actually decent units (but not elite though, thankfully). Anyway, the battle begin taking more time than it should, so I tripled the game speed. In the end, the battle lasted about 30 minutes in triple speed, which means that the battle would have normally lasted 90 minutes! I actually won the battle.

Now I have learned that it is very much possible to rout units, just a little harder; that archers are not very strong, but if you use slingers to shoot into the back of the enemy, you can do quite a bit of damage and etc. EB is now my all-time favorite game:yes:.

I think this income lag happen because the engine divide the whole army upkeep to the city's population, I think so because in my AS campaign Arbela has as garisson only a general and a pantodapoi unit but huge army upkeep and I had't recruited any units there, so maybe that happen because this city is already a huge one...

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Originally Posted by AntiochosMegas

I think this income lag happen because the engine divide the whole army upkeep to the city's population, I think so because in my AS campaign Arbela has as garisson only a general and a pantodapoi unit but huge army upkeep and I had't recruited any units there, so maybe that happen because this city is already a huge one...

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Exactly.