General impressions

Well about ships; I'm now playing Epeiros. I just conquered Thermon. I must chose between "Allied Democratic State" and "Allied Oligarchic State" When you right clic on one of the two options you open a window explaining the difference between the two solutions. It says (ao) quote Experience bonus for ships with cannons recruited : +1 unquote. :stare:
By the way, I switched to Epeiros because I've been stopped in my Romani campaign that refuses to open either of the saves I made : not from quick save, not from a save with a name I gave, not from the automatic save. Has this bug been reported to you yet ?
Anyway : great game that will improve with time. Regards

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It says (ao) quote Experience bonus for ships with cannons recruited : +1 unquote.

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Well just wait a "few" hundred years :book2:

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not from a save with a name I gave, not from the automatic save. Has this bug been reported to you yet ?

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Never had that.

A couple weird things I've noticed is pirate ships spawning I'm very small lakes causing storms that last for many turns. Lost a faction leader to it.

As Pontus I get a lot of births and adoptions for leaders but as Pergamum I barely got any and those I did get had a lot lower loyalty.

As Pontus when one of of family members died and made the province of Sophene or Gazaka ai controlled the ai was able to build a military colony allowing the recruiting of Greek units in both. I am sure that option wasn't there when I had a family member in it. WAD?

Also the Pontus faction leader has the VC trait even if I am playing a short campaign.

My excitement at seeing that this was actually out is still at max. I can not help but smile every time I glance at the EB2 icon on my desktop. As far as gameplay goes, I've been reading far to much, and have only made it about twenty turns in. I did notice the trait and javelin issues, but they have already been reported and I have nothing else to add. Except a "well done" and an emphatic "thank you".

Why are the factions colored uniformly on the minimap? It looks horrific. EB1 showed you the topography of the map, and it came out looking totally natural.

Oddly..I was just thinking how much I like the 'washed out' colour scheme of the minimap with fow on.

Is there any way to mod this in myself?

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Originally Posted by Smoke=fire

My excitement at seeing that this was actually out is still at max. I can not help but smile every time I glance at the EB2 icon on my desktop.

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Same here! :laugh4:

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Originally Posted by Smoke=fire

I did notice the trait and javelin issues, but they have already been reported and I have nothing else to add. Except a "well done" and an emphatic "thank you".

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There's an unofficial fix for the javelins, also cav and spears at the twcenter, courtesy of QuintusSertorius.
EDIT:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...1#post14136914
EDIT2: Hadn't seen it, it's here as well!
https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...post2053619610

And an official fix for most annoying trait issues : https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...rait-mechanics.:yes:

That you.

I have been playing this for two days now, and I have to say I love it. I was about to go back to SS but kinda stumbled upon EB2 without any kind of expectations and decided to install that instead.

1) At first the battles seemed sluggish, but it turns out that it actually feels better this way... M2TW and even SS are more dynamic, fast and "gamey" I guess, where as this feels more realistic (even with combat making casualties more slowly and cav charges being more balanced). I like the idea of battles being more about morale than bloodletting, which seems to be the case in EB2.
2) Routers cannot be picked off as easily, which seems to shift the focus of battles somewhat from dominating the field with cavalry into this careful forming and reforming of lines and not chasing after carelessly.
3) The javelins don't seem to work on offense as well as in f.ex. SS, but again I feel that this is just causing me to play the game in a different manner. The only annoying thing about this at the moment is when a unit gets stuck on "reload" and cannot properly defend itself in melee.
4) I love the walls of text and the depth in which everything is described. Hopefully a future version has every description in it's place.
5) Graphics are great, although sometimes the battle animations are a bit glitchy. I don't mind. The only real visual problem ATM (at least with the Ardui) is that sometimes agents and settlements are hard to see from other terrain on the campaign map (during the green seasons).
6) The most important thing: This is the first time in a few years that I've played a game that has made me go "just... one... more... turn" after playing for over 12h. This mod is brilliant!

sorry i didnt know where to post,
when this mod will be complete and out of beta?

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Originally Posted by Decent_Greek

sorry i didnt know where to post,
when this mod will be complete and out of beta?

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Unfortunately that is a question we cannot answer s we do not know ourselves. I know it is not a satisfactory response, but when you are dealing with a team composed entirely of volunteers who communicate almost exclusively via the internet, you cannot make any certified commitments.

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Originally Posted by Nylonbeast

2) Routers cannot be picked off as easily, which seems to shift the focus of battles somewhat from dominating the field with cavalry into this careful forming and reforming of lines and not chasing after carelessly.
3) The javelins don't seem to work on offense as well as in f.ex. SS, but again I feel that this is just causing me to play the game in a different manner. The only annoying thing about this at the moment is when a unit gets stuck on "reload" and cannot properly defend itself in melee.

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Both 2) and 3) are due to be fixed in the next release; cavalry are too slow and javelineers don't work at all. Please see the unofficial hotfix which resolves both.

As KH, I don't think I'm seeing generals coming of age, although I do see wives of generals dying. Does this mean KH can only get new generals through adoption and "Man of the hour", please?
In one battle during AI turn relieving a city besieged by me, about 7K Getai vs. my <3K Hellenes, upon victory, something got stucked - game didn't crash, menu was working, but general was just smashing the sword against the city, but capture screen would not open. Also all armies stayed alive, when I replayed the battle after loading again (enemy took some more turns to attack), it ended normally. I suppose this isn't too helpful, but not sure I can give more details.
Game crashes from time to time, especially scrolling through menus. Not too bad though.
As KH, state of the hoplites is such that it's much easier to switch to phalanx asap. And of course best way to fight the phalanx is not to fight the phalanx but rout it.
I notice there is some hotfix for cavalry, not sure if it includes also units reforming to relatively narrow columns quite often.
I haven't grasped the colonization, although I ask about that in separate thread.

EDIT:
Also, BOII are on flight, they apparently have most money of all, but only one army with four units and no settlement. I think they are static now for lot of turns.

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Originally Posted by llib

I notice there is some hotfix for cavalry, not sure if it includes also units reforming to relatively narrow columns quite often.

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Only for underarm lancer units, other cavalry's formations haven't been touched.

Loving the new mod thus far! I made an account just to post and say great job guys!

I think I will start a new campaign as Pergammon today...

I've been playing the game for a couple of weeks by now. Started a with Boii, and have so far got somewhere around turn 160-200, give or take 20 turns. Yeah, I'm not that a methodical player. Anyway, I thought I could share some impressions here.

First of all, the mod is visually stunning. It looks downright beautiful even on lower-than-medium settings, and isn't ugly on the lowest settings either, which is what I've had to use. Got to scale the unit size down for the next campaign. Variance in appearances within a single unit is especially nice, being rich and plentiful and doing a good job in representing the non-standardized nature of equipment and weaponry in armies of the era. Having seen a little of Rome II, I could say EB2 could be on par with it graphics-wise, so good job there. :2thumbsup:

Gameplay seems to have improved from the earlier also, and I like most of the design choices you have made here. Boii started the campaign actually making money instead of losing it, which would have been unthinkable for a landlocked Central European faction in first EB. I also like how recruitment is tied to the government type instead of two separate barrack-buildings whose maximum levels are determined by government type. It's also nice to be able to recruit elite units right from the start instead of waiting for several decades to have the barracks on high enough level. Recruitment pool mechanic is also adding new depth to the strategic level, since retraining and spamming a single type of unit is much harder. AI also seems to be smarter, but I can't be sure. Prices of the units also seem to correlate well with their usefulness, which is a nice change.

Battles work very differently from EB1, and are also harder. Their pace has also been reduced quite a lot. Units move slower, missiles have shorter range (I think) and AI works smarter and more aggressively, making several old tactics either useless or less effective and harder to execute. Units also die slower but break and regroup faster, making morale and maneuvering superior to brute force in almost every way. Cavalry is also less effective at charges but seems to have more staying power in melee, making the moral impact of their charges more important than the killing power. I like these changes since it makes decisions made on the strategic map more important, because players can no longer just fight their way through every tough situation they might face. Besides, you get used to it soon.

Mod has also been quite stable, and it has crashed only about two times. It also works faster than EB1, with battles, menus and campaign map loading more quickly. Props for that also. :2thumbsup:

There are some issues, though. The Boii faction colour, for example, is nigh-impossible to see from the faction ranking-scroll, and the same colour also makes it hard to see the strength of my armies from their banners. Siege battles also take extremely long time, especially when attacking, and that makes them annoying to play. I haven't also seen any change at all in the authority of my faction leaders no matter how many confederations I build, even though the building description says so, so that might be broken. I don't really understand much about authority anyway though, so it might just be my imagination. :shrug:

All in all, however, the mod's excellent. Keep up the good work!

I have a question : When were the Etruscans completely defeated in Italy and under Roman rule, as in what year near the starting timeframe of the mod?

And a suggestion : I REALLY recommend that for reform requirements scripts, the team removes criteria such as "fight x battles of over y units against z faction / regions" for everyone. It's so random, frustrating and extremely unlikely to happen like that due to the nature of Total War. Replace those with something more feasibly, like "own region x, y and z", or something less specific of the sort. @V.T. Marvin

Strange to be back playing EB and looking at these forums again after so long but thank you guys for working so hard on getting it released.

Having heard that EBII was out I ordered Medieval Total War II and played a long campaign as France which was fun. Then I tried EB 2.01 and sound effects didn't seem to work which may have been the gold 1.5 patch not installed correctly. So reinstalled everything but came with a securcom wrong disc message. And this came up even without EB installed. After a lot of trial and error and research, it seems that the Kingdom exe launcher was changed after I installed the 1.5 patch gold patch for MTW2 and this stopped Kingdoms from launching. So after installing and reinstalling a few times, I only had to replace Kingdoms.exe with an unprotected version and it worked fine for Kingdoms and EB2.01 with no wrong disc error.

Anyway love game and love how authentic it looks and feels, especially in contrast with the vanilla version. I've started with Koinon Hellenon faction. I have really enjoyed living out my fantasy bringing further glory for the Ancient Greeks. Military Conquest building with no description is the only problem I've encountered so far which I imagine with be in the updates. I love the detail; the look of the units; how the battles feel challenging on VH; and how generals and family members seem to me to be more relevant to how I play the game. There has been some initial confusion with minor settlements, colonies, reform conditions and such. But less so after reading here and playing the game. So much fun to be playing Europa Barbarorum again.

So, its about time for my first General Impressions also - ..i enjoyed the Game so much that i almost forget to give some feedback also. ..and as a Pc/software dummy, not able to help actively in the development of this great Mod, i can only at least try to give some back in form of feedback and not only quietly benefit from all the work from you peoples involved in this great great Mod.

Hope i do not write here to much of things already reported. And i dont add here things i already read about here or were already some additional mods/Patches are available.(like regarding the skirmishers and long-range Psiloi, Cavalry, or the FM Traits).

First of all for a (still) Beta Version this Game is marvelous!
The whole Game is unexpected really very stable! Even more than the final EB 1.2. I never had this after Battle CTD's only within about 80 seasons some 3 or 4 happenings on Strategy Map; when all of a sudden after clicking on some unit or diplomatic info or such, the fields for the accept/ok and exit/leave buttons are not shown - i.e. square fields of another colour or a cutout of some other Picture is shown there instead.
Right after that comes a message that EB2.01 would now be closed because of some error. An quite convenient announced CTD ;-). But since never a CTD took place right after a battle - never a long hard battle was in vain!
That is really great for a Beta version! (..i expected the other way around)
Great Work! :2thumbsup:

Of course the units and the Vegetation and Cities look awesome! ..so detailed - just great.
But regarding saturation and colours i find something had to be done for the next release: Tux already made a great Patch which solves most of the over saturation problem in vegetation (e.g. the poisonous green of the grass is gone there and he added interesting lighting) maybe still a bit more can be modified there - as also the trees are sometimes to over saturated green or not so natural green and quite often it is to dark.

The saturation of the units itself i find also a bit to much. I know, there is the Graphic Enhancement Mod for that - but i sadly cannot use it. (it works perfectly in Battle but strangely the Campaign map is sooo awfully slow with it - disabling it doesn't change anything - that the Game is actually unplayable with it) ..in my case some compatability problem of my graphic card. ...but since its not a to old one (2009 - GeForce 240GT - quite some time after M2TW came out) some better solution integrated in a future release would be great.

Another thing: compared to EB1 the shapes/outlines are definitely more sharp as in EB1. Like the Sarisses of the Soldiers or the sea-horizon. ..drawn like with a sharp pencil - while in EB1 it looked more realistic.
I already started a thread about if Antialiasing is recommended for EB2.01 or not. https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showt...mmended-or-not
So i dont write all of this here down again.
But still after enabling Antialiasing - those straight lines looked better in my opinion in EB1.

The CAI: im a very slow player (also because of my time) so i can only report of my roughly 20 years campaing as Pergamon. ..with the CAI by default in the EB2.01 version.
Interesting naval invasions took place - even the Sauromatae and Getai use Fleets (maybe regarding Steppe-Factions this is a bit immoderate.)
So a Campaign is definitely more difficult for the player and varied. ..never boring! :yes:
But i have to add that those naval invasions sometimes are really planless. e.g. the Getai are my Allies now since about ten years but instead of further expanding (they own now three provinces) into their very homeland Transylvania with Sarmiszegetusa as Capital (sorry dont know now the ancient Province name) they come over to my Thraikia Chersonesos and Bithynia and even landing with Fleets in Bithynia. They were staying with quite large armies near Nikaia then again at Byzantion or were roaming around in Pergamon Provinces - without transgression messages. I still kept them as Ally as i thought as long as they do not attack me i dont bother... but its not very realistic.
Anyway after some time, they are meanwhile at war with the Sauromatae, they left Pergamon Territory and even moved further east onto Pontos and besieged Amaseia. Pontos of course fought them back. (Pontos still only owned their one homeland province and kept their quite large army only to protect it. That also because i buffed up the Ankyra Garrison quite in the beginning so in order that sometime when the Galatians will produce Units also outside of Ankyra i can buff this army up also and will be able to fight them two times in order to fulfil the Pergamon Reform requirements.
..im curious how this campaing will proceede.
but coming to the point again, yes its never boring but surprising and sometimes a bit unrealistic/immoderate.

Also another thing regarding the fleets: all other Factions (as mentioned even the Sauromatae) produce fleets - and not only one, but instead of merging the fleets (i only encounterd one time a fleet of two trireme fleets) all those fleets roam around as loners. ..ok, sometimes at critical points or times they come together so that they would reinforce themselves but still its not the same - also it looks weird - so much fleets (ships in display) - a bit crowded.
Of course as Player i merge my fleets to be strong enough - and at the time 254BC now - a fleet of three Trireme Fleets merged together is strong enough to prevail.
The Ai-Factions should be able to use this approach also.

When assaulting a Town: the Building Captured Message only show up when capturing a Gate. (dont know maybe thats a M2TW default thing?.) ..and strangely even after a Gate was secured the fire from the Gate-Towers still comes down on the Players army and not the other way around like in EB1. Strangely this (regarding the Gate-Towers) happens not always - in some Assaults they functioned then like in EB1.
Same with the other Towers - although my units running through them ..they were not beset with my own forces but still were firing on my units. ..and again: but this time i am not so definitely sure, this happens not always like this.

Unit Experience Points: they do not add to defence skill - only to the attack points, but after two more also the increase of them stops. i.e. i can have really tough 6 chevron Veteran Units but still they only have two or three points more in attack - and only there. no defence skill is increased.

Battle statistics: sometimes they are not shown full, i mean the detailed statistics, and they are then not able to scroll down. ..thats just a very minor thing but just i noticed it.

Some problem with the Gymnasion Mikron: the retraining of units does not work all the time. First i didnt know that compared to EB1, here it is not intended to be able to retrain (one or even more) and recruit a new unit within one season. But then i encountered a small kind of bug after construction of the Gymnasion Mikron: in the first seasons with it, fresh recruited units came out with no experience points added, so i had to retrain them. After a few seasons and since then, the fresh recruited ones came out as in EB1 with 1 chevron. But still when i retrain units (in my campaign mainly fresh units from other provinces without a Gymnasion), they come out in the next season randomly sometimes with the chevron or not.

Of course, all this is meant as feedback and not as bitching around, in case some of it will sound like it...english is also not my native tongue..

So finally: a big Thank you for all you developers and members of the team or anyone who is involved in developing this awesome mod!
:hail:

Kleitos

Can I put the "beehive" music back in and take the "Greek kebab house" music out?

Absolutely no other criticisms whatsoever. Well, the fact that my boys walk through walls sometimes, but then my boys are magic...

Hi, have played EBI since 0.something and enjoyed it a lot (a mod I always come back to).
And when I stumbled over EBII 2.01 I immediately dusted off MTWII and installed the game an mod.

Have put a lot of hours into the game already and can only give you the team the highest kudos for a beautiful and exciting mod.

Love the new factions (haven't played them all yet), they really give something to the game play (ex Ptolemaio don't blitz the hole of the eastern map anymore)

Things I have noticed during my game time in EBII:

In the diplomacy screen for some factions, when accepting an amount of mnai to pay, the accept and decline symbols have been swapped (Baktria and Bosporos)

In a Carthage game my starting ship unit (can't remember the name) ended up as a land unit when entering Cartago (got the save game if, if you are interested).

The aforementioned ship unit is described as a siege engine in its unit card.

In a game playing as Rome, I had 4 neutral Epiros army stacks standing around roman controlled Rhegion for over 50 turns as they tried to come over to Carthage controlled Messana. Really missed an option to expel the armies without going to total war with Epiros :laugh4:

I have noticed that the late Sweboz armies just sweeps the other ai factions off the map like flies. And when I attack a late Sweboz controlled city/camp whit 2 or 3 units in it whit a full army stack I loose around 45% to 60% on auto resolve. And in battle mode against the Sweboz the late german spearmen seem "almost" invincibly. So for me it seems like the late Sweboz are a bit overpowered.
Haven't played the Sweboz yet, so don't have the whole picture.

EBII seems slower paced than EBI, which I like. Love to build up my cities in my empire before releasing my legions/hordes on the known world.

So kudos too the EB team for a great mod and for all the hours they put into this greatest of mods :ave:

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Originally Posted by Freka

I have noticed that the late Sweboz armies just sweeps the other ai factions off the map like flies.

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Same for me, They control most of Europe North of the Alps. Also I've never seen anyone but Makedonia win the war for Greece

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Originally Posted by Freka

I have noticed that the late Sweboz armies just sweeps the other ai factions off the map like flies. And when I attack a late Sweboz controlled city/camp whit 2 or 3 units in it whit a full army stack I loose around 45% to 60% on auto resolve. And in battle mode against the Sweboz the late german spearmen seem "almost" invincibly. So for me it seems like the late Sweboz are a bit overpowered.
Haven't played the Sweboz yet, so don't have the whole picture.

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they're not: the stats are generally only slightly better than earlier versions of the Sweboz. The near invincibility I suspect is due to the generals: they have a nasty feature when fighting them (the things you learn about Germanic military culture :clown:).

if you want to reduce casualties and ease your life, I would suggest one of two possibilities:

1-hit the general's unit from its left flank (i.e. where the general is), and kill him. while you do that, hit the rest of the army hard--very hard. the combined effect of pressure and the loss of a general should send the regular units packing. then focus on the rest of the late general's bodyguard, and surround them and give them everything you got.
2-bring lots of missiles against the Sweboz: they are not well armored, so are vulnerable in the extreme.

either way, I find it fascinating that this mirrors what did happen historically (sort of): Germanic peoples did come to dominate central Europe culturally and politically, and later spilled across the Rhine and Danube.

About 2- ....missiles do not generally do damage in this version of the game... practically none in my experience. Practically the only thing that works in the tactical combat map is maneuvering. Again in my experience it is no use attacking a unit for the kill before it routes... effort is better placed attacking morale more than anything else.

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Originally Posted by kdrakak

About 2- ....missiles do not generally do damage in this version of the game... practically none in my experience

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That's because you're clearly not interested enough to explore this very forum to find out a fix for skirmisher units that makes them quite deadly and useful as you are interested to type about it.

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Originally Posted by Harkon

That's because you're clearly not interested enough to explore this very forum to find out a fix for skirmisher units that makes them quite deadly and useful as you are interested to type about it.

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Well, archers and slingers seem to have a lot of trouble doing damage as well, and they actually shoot at the enemy, provided they are in range. And have line of sight. And you micromanage them so they actually open fire instead of walking right into charging enemies.

Of course, no unit actually does much damage in a head on fight, unless you give them a lot of time. Winning quite often comes down to maneuvering in such away that you can do as much damage to their morale as possible, not actually killing enemies.

Their long range can't make them as deadly, archers against any armoured enemy won't be very effective, yeah, but slingers can do damage.

Dear developers,

I decided to start a Sweboz campaign for the first time a few days ago and I am compelled to say that the implementation of the culture constitutes pure brilliance!
The tribal migrations in particular, add a whole new level of immersion but strangely, no one ever commented on this feature on this forum as far as I know.

Having the migrations modelled that way already for the Sweboz, do you plan to implement them for the Celts and the Lugians as well? Could it be ahistorical to add tribal migrations for these factions given the fact that the Celts are much less nomadic in nature and Lugians did not really took part in migratory movements (I may be very wrong here) until the last centuries of the western Roman Empire?

Hats off gentlemen._