Just begun to play EB - my first impressions
It finally happened - one shiny new PC with a decent graphics card and I can play EB! Being still only just into my second attempt at a campaign it's still early days for my EB experience, but I thought I'd share my impressions of the mod.
I began my first campaign as the Arverni. Immediately from the first load of the campaign map, I was blown away by the sheer attention to detail and immersion potential of the map. The new resources graphics were especially helpful and made it much easier to get an idea of the distribution of strategically important resources across the land. And not just the conception but the execution was superb, with the artistic quality of the icons eclipsing vanilla.
As I'd already read a number of the gameplay guides, I wasn't surprised by the poor economic situation of my faction at the game's start. Knowing that there were two options for dealing with it - conquer immediately or disband and invest - I went for the first, swooping on the Eleutheroi lands to the South and West. And so to my first battle.
The decrease in lethality rates was immediately obvious, as was to a lesser extent that of movement speed. I did find that tactics became more important as a result of combat lasting longer and cavalry being so much less powerful, although the general cohesion of the AI's battle-line was not significantly better than vanilla (hardcoded AI). Battles on medium difficulty were far more challenging than vanilla - infantry combat now lasts long enough for the enemy to react to it, so preventing flanking manoevres is more important.
The quality of the models and skins (on high detail with anti-aliasing) was excellent, and I found myself frequently pausing in order to go and take a look at a particular unit in action. The celtic voices were a nice touch, although I was a little disappointed not to have any response to selecting individual units, even if it was only a generic "yes, lord!". Still, the sense of realism was incomporable with vanilla.
Ultimately my first attempt at the campaign was a failure as my treasury plunged into more than 24,000 mnai of debt and my homelands came under sustained attack from the Aedui. A second campaign taking the alternative route of disbandment and investment has hitherto proven more successful - I am in the black, have expanded into two provinces, allied with the Romans and signed a ceasefire with the Aedui after a war which brought both federations' armed forces to their knees.
In summary, after very limited playing experience (but years of reading the forum), I would list the following as my biggest "pros and cons" of the EB mod.
Pros:
1) the sheer all-encompassing totality of the conversion, and the consistently high standard of work throughout. From the loading screens and the 2D art to the music and campaign map graphics, the quality and quantity of the content surpasses many professional games.
2) the realism - I am not an academically qualified historian but I am a well-read enough amateur to be able to appreciate the volume of research that has gone into this and the desire to truly represent each of the nations and cultures as they were rather than as "it would be cool if they were".
3) Models and skins are excellent.
4) The battles are more challenging and realistic, within the limits of what is softcoded.
Cons:
1) Starting in such a poor economic situation seems somewhat unrealistic - surely not every nation was on the brink of bankruptcy in 272 BC due to massive military overspending? The changed balance between income and costs of units/buildings from vanilla is also the reason why the AI needs the big cash handouts which apparently (I'm not there yet) lead to late-game AI army spamming. I appreciate there may be gameplay reasons why EB went down this route, but I just wonder if it hasn't gone a bit too far.
2) While I approve of the government system overall, I'm rather out of sympathy with the restriction of Type I and II governments to particular geographic areas. Seems to me like a departure from the principle that that EB portrays the world at 272, and then leaves it to the player to decide on the faction's actions. If I'm playing as the Ptolemaioi and I'm rich and powerful enough to decide that I'll migrate tens of thousands of my people to Hibernia, completely settle the area so that it has a Helleno-Egyptian culture, and impose direct rule from Alexandria then I should be able to do it. It should be ridiculously difficult, but possible. The geographical restrictions on Type I and II seem to set the player on tramlines somewhat, using the (actually irrelevant) history of what a faction ACTUALLY did to restrict the options of what it MIGHT HAVE done. A fairly minor quibble really, just takes a long para to explain! :2cents:
3) I love the authentic, contemporary-language names for unit and building types, but I think there's a case for naming cities and provinces in English. In a game where the gain and loss of territory is an essential part of gameplay, the use of a neutral, non-faction language to name the parts of that territory would actually assist immersion. For example, When playing as the Romani, owning a city called Qart-Hadasht (apologies for any misspelling) is jarring. Having it named "Carthage" would avoid this effect - the player knows that the city's label in-game is a translation, so they are free to imagine what it is a translation of - Qart-Hadasht or Carthago, depending on context.
The pros massively outweigh the cons, and I'd like to congratulate everyone involved on what is a quite spectacular total conversion.
Re: Just begun to play EB - my first impressions
Hy Barbarossa, wellcome I just loved your Armenian ARR from vanila.
I think, you'll love the the work on the Eastern factions, just very curious about your opinion. And on the Eastern Greeks
Re: Just begun to play EB - my first impressions
Quote:
Originally Posted by Barbarossa82
2) While I approve of the government system overall, I'm rather out of sympathy with the restriction of Type I and II governments to particular geographic areas. Seems to me like a departure from the principle that that EB portrays the world at 272, and then leaves it to the player to decide on the faction's actions. If I'm playing as the Ptolemaioi and I'm rich and powerful enough to decide that I'll migrate tens of thousands of my people to Hibernia, completely settle the area so that it has a Helleno-Egyptian culture, and impose direct rule from Alexandria then I should be able to do it. It should be ridiculously difficult, but possible. The geographical restrictions on Type I and II seem to set the player on tramlines somewhat, using the (actually irrelevant) history of what a faction ACTUALLY did to restrict the options of what it MIGHT HAVE done. A fairly minor quibble really, just takes a long para to explain! :2cents:
Creating a realistic, detailed and dynamic cultural assimilation system is a very hard task even for simpler mods, doing it to EB level would require at least one year of development and yet would be rather controversial in its implementation.
It would have been slightly easier if CA didn't mess up recruitment conditionals like "building present" for units, so while possible it's often not worth the effort.
There are mods like RTR or XGM that are trying to emulate the assimilation process with tricks like cultural barracks or the religion system (which is limited to 3 beliefs unfortunately) but the results are somewhat mild...
One quick solution for the openness fans would be to have a building tree (if EB got still some of those free) with a series of very expensive and long to build structures that would emulate the migration of citizen-settlers, but would that be good enough for the ultimate realism mod?
Only the team knows the answer...
Re: Just begun to play EB - my first impressions
Quote:
Originally Posted by Barbarossa82
Cons:
1) Starting in such a poor economic situation seems somewhat unrealistic - surely not every nation was on the brink of bankruptcy in 272 BC due to massive military overspending? The changed balance between income and costs of units/buildings from vanilla is also the reason why the AI needs the big cash handouts which apparently (I'm not there yet) lead to late-game AI army spamming. I appreciate there may be gameplay reasons why EB went down this route, but I just wonder if it hasn't gone a bit too far.
Pretty much all factions start out broke, but some like the Romani, Ptolemoi (sp) can get out of dept rather quickly. Others, like the barbarian and steppes factions have a VERY hard time getting a + income. In my opinion the way EB potrais the economy makes perfect sence since more developed factions already have a good commercial infrastructure in place, and all it needs is further strenghtening (ex: Romani). While other need to start from scratch with thier economy. (ex: Sweboz)
The massive biggining armies tend to give you an option of how to start the game as you can see. Either expand, or disband and build up an econ.
Now the massive AI spamming of armies is normal. For in the late game YOU should be able to spam armies too (but most likely not as many). The major AI hording complains occurs when the player ALLOWES the AI to continue to attack him/her without taking any/or little offensive action against the AI. Therefore, the AI is free to keep pumping out troops and has no reason to stop attacking you.
My suggestions to you:
-Keep playing for a little while longer and you will find more reasons why EB kicks a**.:yes:
-BTW watch out for the Romani. They are a bunch of back stabbing SOBs.:whip:
Re: Just begun to play EB - my first impressions
Quote:
Originally Posted by Barbarossa82
Cons:
1) Starting in such a poor economic situation seems somewhat unrealistic - surely not every nation was on the brink of bankruptcy in 272 BC due to massive military overspending? The changed balance between income and costs of units/buildings from vanilla is also the reason why the AI needs the big cash handouts which apparently (I'm not there yet) lead to late-game AI army spamming. I appreciate there may be gameplay reasons why EB went down this route, but I just wonder if it hasn't gone a bit too far.
2) While I approve of the government system overall, I'm rather out of sympathy with the restriction of Type I and II governments to particular geographic areas. Seems to me like a departure from the principle that that EB portrays the world at 272, and then leaves it to the player to decide on the faction's actions. If I'm playing as the Ptolemaioi and I'm rich and powerful enough to decide that I'll migrate tens of thousands of my people to Hibernia, completely settle the area so that it has a Helleno-Egyptian culture, and impose direct rule from Alexandria then I should be able to do it. It should be ridiculously difficult, but possible. The geographical restrictions on Type I and II seem to set the player on tramlines somewhat, using the (actually irrelevant) history of what a faction ACTUALLY did to restrict the options of what it MIGHT HAVE done. A fairly minor quibble really, just takes a long para to explain! :2cents:
3) I love the authentic, contemporary-language names for unit and building types, but I think there's a case for naming cities and provinces in English. In a game where the gain and loss of territory is an essential part of gameplay, the use of a neutral, non-faction language to name the parts of that territory would actually assist immersion. For example, When playing as the Romani, owning a city called Qart-Hadasht (apologies for any misspelling) is jarring. Having it named "Carthage" would avoid this effect - the player knows that the city's label in-game is a translation, so they are free to imagine what it is a translation of - Qart-Hadasht or Carthago, depending on context.
1- Yes this is done for AI help, for the most part. The AI needs help at the start and since they get money injections, they don't go into debt. Also, some nations did have monitary problems. Makedon had just be ravaged by Celts. Seleucia and Ptolemai were both having problems with eachother and constant revolts. Arverni & Aedui were at war (though not broke).
2- There has been discussion of dynamic government placements, but due to game restrictions and complexity, it seemed to stop. Perhaps in the future something will change.
3- EB seeks to represent things historically. Cities are represented in the name that the founder/owner of the city would call it. Most name changes after conquest were slight. The Romans would respell in Latin (remember, most city's names weren't written in the same script that Romans [and all of us after] use) and then sometimes reconjugate them. The English spelling is usually the Latin spelling (or close to it) and that wouldn't be right from the non-Rome centered point of view that EB takes.
Re: Just begun to play EB - my first impressions
Quote:
Originally Posted by MarcusAureliusAntoninus
1- Yes this is done for AI help, for the most part. The AI needs help at the start and since they get money injections, they don't go into debt. Also, some nations did have monitary problems. Makedon had just be ravaged by Celts. Seleucia and Ptolemai were both having problems with eachother and constant revolts. Arverni & Aedui were at war (though not broke).
2- There has been discussion of dynamic government placements, but due to game restrictions and complexity, it seemed to stop. Perhaps in the future something will change.
3- EB seeks to represent things historically. Cities are represented in the name that the founder/owner of the city would call it. Most name changes after conquest were slight. The Romans would respell in Latin (remember, most city's names weren't written in the same script that Romans [and all of us after] use) and then sometimes reconjugate them. The English spelling is usually the Latin spelling (or close to it) and that wouldn't be right from the non-Rome centered point of view that EB takes.
Thanks for taking the time to respond, Marcus. I thought there would probably be a technical reason why dynamic government placement couldn't be done - if it meant using up more building complex slots then I for one would far rather have the current fantastic range of new EB buildings, and put up with the fixed government zones.
I know anglicisation of foreign names is a hobby horse of mine - I still think it would make a lot of sense on the campaign map but if the EB team has decided that the current method is the best way of implementing historical authenticity then I can absolutely respect that decision. After all I'd prefer to have too much period realism than too little.
Now, back to the lands of the valiant Arverni...:yes:
Re: Just begun to play EB - my first impressions
Too bad that certain script commands need the visible name of settlements and renaming cities messes things up in EB. I wish I could rename the cities that I take, the way the Romans did. That way they could have the historic name at the start and the Roman name when they are mine. But that makes the script backfire...
