Patch pretty good; few issues left

To give credit where credit is due...

Bridge battles are much better. There are still some instances where units on Hold by the coast will turn, revert to their default formation (usually 3 ranks deep, for archers at least) and in doing so drown troops, but at least it's not as bad as it used to be, and I think units keep formation when on bridges, rather than moving in a rabble formation, no front line

Ships and agents can move much further across the Strat map now

Marius occurs much later, so Triarii are worth building as they are not immediately replaced

Squallor has been tuned down, so managing cities is easier, allowing more focus on war and less on SimCity

Rebels are more active

AI not so stupid in that it does not always stand still now when being hit by missile fire. Still does occur sometimes, esp. when the AI is outnumbered, but at least it doesn't happen as much.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.

However, a few things still, in my opinion, need to or should be fixed. Some are bugs, some are just game factors I really don't like. Those are...

Bug - Cavalry still does a bad job of killing after the first charge. If they are even in a possition where thier target is split, some in front of the cav line, some behind, the cav unit will just trot at the same speed as the fleeing nme. They won't move forward to kill those in front, nor will it loop around to get the entire nme unit in front for another charge.

Feature - Family fertility is still a function of empire size. The ratio is still about 1 male heir per city. This means that you cannot have a governor in each city and a General controling each field army. That just seems dumb. The problem only gets worse as your empire expands and you have more and more armies in the field. Please revert to the MTW practice of allowing any unit to be made a governor. I think one kind of tradeoff would be to restrict the number of ancilaries Captain-Governors could have, as well as cap the level of beneficial traits Captain-Governors coudl acquire. Thus General-Governors would still be preferable, but Captain-Governors could fill in in a pinch. Also, from a historical perspective, Generals often had deputies who handled stuff like this. Legates, Tribunes, Prefects, etc. all were leutenants of the General charged with running logistical stuff like cities, camps, supplies, etc. so that the General was free to focus on the fighting.

Bug/Feature - Roman infantry still have a LONG pause between when you order them to attack with pila, when they actually throw it, and when they actually charge the nme unit. To be honest, I bet it would actually be more effective to throw the pila WHILE RUNNING as I think it would actually increase the momentum behind the throw. Maybe we should find a way to allow them to throw WHILE charging. Not sure, just an idea.

Feature - Infantry still move way too fast. Velites and Hastati seem to move at the same speed, which seems okay because they're both classified as Light Infantry, but Hastati have way more armor so they should be moving slower. Even heavy infantry like Principes and Triarii run pretty damn fast. I think the speed difference between infantry and cavalry is too small. Cav speed seems okay, but infantry speed should be slower.

Feature - battlefields are extremely bland. They lack any of the significant terrain features that were integral to MTW. I am irked by, but understand, the removal of the easily-defended hills in the corners of the map that MTW had, but there are hardly any defendable hills AT ALL on these maps, nor are there impassible cliffs to create chokepoints on the battle maps, nor have I seen any river battles with two bridges instead of just one. Also, the forests are seem to be either the whole map or almost not there at all. The MTW France and Germany maps were great forest maps I think. Mostly flat, but with a few significant forests on each map.

Feature - Height seems to give very little range advantage to missile units. I don't like that. Up it.

Feature - Rank bonus seems to have been removed. I don't like that either. It seems even worse given that phalanx units were good only because of the rank bonus. What made them so effective was the quantity of spear points one had to contend with before even reaching the first line of men. That advantage was granted by long spears and the ranks of men behind the first who weilded them. Rank bonus should come back.

i heared that wasn't normal, but given by mods. dont know for sure

i'm talking about the spear/phalanx thing.

Very reasonable.
The only thing that makes me wonder is, why would you need a governor in every city? OK, if he has a some influence it helps a little, but unrest isn`t such a great problem any more.

the squalor was A BIG prob. and Freindly Fire as well,glad they fix it,

it's more realistic

true, you don't NEED a governor in ever province. You never did actually, and the "Govern all provinces" option makes governor-less cities less of a risk. However, they still provide a significant advantage. Their Influence stat helps with unrest, their Management stat helps with revenue, and the ancilaries and traits they can accumulate can help (or hurt) both of those factors.

Personally, I really liked the MTW system for governors because I felt it added a bit more RP to the game, which helped me care a bit more about the units. In MTW, I could make the captain of a group of Royal Knights the governor of Scotland. Scotland's revenue would benefit from his Acumen stat, their happiness would benefit from his Dread stat, the captain would benefit because being the governor of Scotland granted the holder a command star, and the king benefited because being granted a title improved the holder's loyalty stat. The other advantage was that the governor could leave the city and still be governor, though the effectiveness of his Dread stat on happiness wained if he moved too far away.

I mean, that's a pretty damn good system. RTW's system only messes things up. No advantage over MTW's system is gained by the way RTW handles governors. Now you have fewer candidates for governor because only family members can do it, and you have fewer generals and/or fewer governors because they can only do one job or the other, not both at the same time.

Servius, do you need a new family member to lead an army or to govern? Just use captains in fighting those rebels (for promotions). Also, the longer you play, the more family members you will get anyway. In additioin, early in the game, you won't have the "learning centers" so the bonus won't be that big if there are any at all, especially when the generals cost money per turn as well.

Personally, I like the RTW system. The limited characters make them very special. For example,the faction heir I picked to lead my conquering army developed a -3 penalty to order and popularity with the senate so I had him disinherited.

I like RPG aspect of that as opposed to the by-the-numbers MTW characters. ~:)

I don't know too much about the patch (Haven't played RTW in a while, and not with the patch) but I agree with all that Servius had to say. Sounds like the patch did some things but not enough.

One wonders if there would have been all these problems if RTW was more like MTW in many ways...

*Is shot for heresy/treason by the RTW apostles who have never played MTW or who found it lacking*

Upgrading walls that have damage is still a bug. I take over a city with wooden walls and I do'nt repair it because I'm busy build a stonewall. Well when the new stonewall appears it has the exact same damage as the wooden wall did.

So those holes in the wooden wall carry over to an upgraded wall.

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Originally Posted by oaty

Upgrading walls that have damage is still a bug. I take over a city with wooden walls and I do'nt repair it because I'm busy build a stonewall. Well when the new stonewall appears it has the exact same damage as the wooden wall did.

So those holes in the wooden wall carry over to an upgraded wall.

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Probably not a bug per se, you should probably have to pay the repair cost plus the new wall cost.

Either that or it is like when Stalin had an impounded B-29 copied: the researchers, machinists, designers, and craftsmen were so in fear of Stalin (he had been very severe with aircraft industry folks) that they copied it perfectly--including obvious repair patches to the skin, etc. So your stonemasons are standing there, scratching their little virtual heads, saying, "Well, he never had the old wall repaired right here, so he must want that hole in it just like it is." ~D

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Originally Posted by Servius1234

true, you don't NEED a governor in ever province. You never did actually, and the "Govern all provinces" option makes governor-less cities less of a risk. However, they still provide a significant advantage. Their Influence stat helps with unrest, their Management stat helps with revenue, and the ancilaries and traits they can accumulate can help (or hurt) both of those factors.

Personally, I really liked the MTW system for governors because I felt it added a bit more RP to the game, which helped me care a bit more about the units. In MTW, I could make the captain of a group of Royal Knights the governor of Scotland. Scotland's revenue would benefit from his Acumen stat, their happiness would benefit from his Dread stat, the captain would benefit because being the governor of Scotland granted the holder a command star, and the king benefited because being granted a title improved the holder's loyalty stat. The other advantage was that the governor could leave the city and still be governor, though the effectiveness of his Dread stat on happiness wained if he moved too far away.

I mean, that's a pretty damn good system. RTW's system only messes things up. No advantage over MTW's system is gained by the way RTW handles governors. Now you have fewer candidates for governor because only family members can do it, and you have fewer generals and/or fewer governors because they can only do one job or the other, not both at the same time.

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or it doesn't they require a very tight surveilance cause they can also be bad for the city and turn out to be money trowing corrupt bastards

I'm suprised no one has mentioned the HA bug yet, or has it been determined it wasn't a bug that the HA don't fire half the time, even when they are standing still.

There are several bugs and remaining typos/errors:

1. horse/chariot/camel archer bug (but there is a work around.)
2. Elephant archer bug -- no fix so far
3. Spain not getting "Long Shield Cav" -- ommission in the building file.
4. Seleucids can build certain elephants everywhere -- ommission in the building file
5. Cav can charge downhill completely through a phalanx -- haven't tested this myself yet.
6. Scarface trait is bugged.
7. Velites and cav auxilia rendered with pila, but have javelins
8. merc HA's are supposed be available in one of the merc pools but are not because of a typo "max `" when it should reac "max 1"
9. Many Egyptian stats are oddball or wrong.
10. East Heavy Infantry get both phalanx with spear attribute and mount effect -- this looks like an erroneous duplication, since for all other units it is either/or.

Some others that escape me at the moment.

The A.I. sallying when you have ladders can cause a CTD. The A.I. rushes out so the obvious thing to do is drop them and since they are rushing at you so fast you can end up fighting on top of them. Well when you accidentally grip them in the middle of a fight it can CTD.

Simple solution, siege equipment was well guarded in so the most sieges, so the simple solution is to have it deployed and unequipped behind your lines. This would improve multiple problems. 1 you can't drop the equipment so the A.I. has an obstacle course(can make great flank protection too). 2 all you have to do is rush a ladder at the wall and the A.I. will quickly run back in meanwhile you quickly capture the towers and they are doomed. This would make the human run back and actally get the equipment if they want to capture the walls. 3 the A.I. does'nt even try to destroy siege equipment unless it is equiped, great way soak arrows into a ram or tower if you can afford it.

Enslavement is bugged either it's not boosting population properly or it is incorrectly displayed. I had Alesia and was next to 2 enslaved towns but the link of enslaved towns brought population growth to 6.5 percent 4.5 percent from slaves. Only problem was I was getting the incorrect population growth and was growing at 2 percent.

11. Square beaches bug. Also some reported sky and cloud textures appearing on the ground during a battle.
12. Unable to scroll building list when there are more than two lines.

13. If you become a protectorate of the AI, and they turn around and attack you, the financial scroll continues to show payments to the AI. Mostly a visual bug, as your actual finances aren't affected.
14. The AI starts too many pointless wars with ships. It seems if it has a ship, it insists on blockading your port and starting a war. Even if you just became their protectorate, or just declared a ceasefire.

Bh

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Feature - Rank bonus seems to have been removed. I don't like that either. It seems even worse given that phalanx units were good only because of the rank bonus. What made them so effective was the quantity of spear points one had to contend with before even reaching the first line of men. That advantage was granted by long spears and the ranks of men behind the first who weilded them. Rank bonus should come back.

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There is, still, some sort of rank bonus. I did a few tests with militia hoplites, and it seems that the deeper phalanx will actually push through the other one, winning the fight. Other spearmen don't seem to get this bonus (tested with triarii), deeply-formed triarii won't push through shallow formations.(mainly because the other triarii will deepen it's center when the fight begins).

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why would you need a governor in every city?

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So that you can change tax. More often than not, the tax will be very high, causing the peasants to become annoyed, and unless you have a governor there, you won't be able to bring down tax, so the people revolt and you lose your city.

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Originally Posted by Mikeus Caesar

So that you can change tax. More often than not, the tax will be very high, causing the peasants to become annoyed, and unless you have a governor there, you won't be able to bring down tax, so the people revolt and you lose your city.

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Easy solution. If it is on military build policy move it to another build policy and back and the game changes the taxes to a non-rebellious rate unless of course not even low taxes will save your butt.