Suggestions for EB 2

[lionhard]

Im posting this as suggestions but they may have already been included. Im wondering will the year in history be included in EB2 and if so can any 1 extend it because it added so much more to the game on EB1. I actually enjoyed reading it lol. If nobody is willing to pursue the year in history futher im willing to add to whats already been done and see where i get. Let me know if this would help?

Also i thought i had a better experience on RTW when Factions spoke english, i know the foreign language adds to the theme but all factions are the same which would not have been true, so may as well be in english

Also will the campaign have more of an advanced AI movement? where the AI acts also more accurate to history?

P.s iv just bought a new pc just for EB2 so hurry up

[A Very Super Market]

Also i thought i had a better experience on RTW when Factions spoke english, i know the foreign language adds to the theme but all factions are the same which would not have been true, so may as well be in english

Pardon? I don't understand this question/statement

Also will the campaign have more of an advanced AI movement? where the AI acts also more accurate to history?

AI in the TW series is hard-coded, and the EB team can do nothing about it. They will act as stupid as they do in the vanilla game. However, EB uses the Kingdoms expansion, which features better AI.

[bobbin]

Im posting this as suggestions but they may have already been included. Im wondering will the year in history be included in EB2 and if so can any 1 extend it because it added so much more to the game on EB1. I actually enjoyed reading it lol. If nobody is willing to pursue the year in history futher im willing to add to whats already been done and see where i get. Let me know if this would help?

Also i thought i had a better experience on RTW when Factions spoke english, i know the foreign language adds to the theme but all factions are the same which would not have been true, so may as well be in english

I think the year in history are quite low priority for EBII and they take a lot of work to make, the current ones will be in but i doubt there will be any new ones for a while.

Not entirely sure what you on about in the second part but if your saying that all the factions speak the same language then thats incorrect, there are 5 different main languages in the game (latin, greek, celtic, punic and persian) and some others are represented through unit names (proto-germanic etc). It's not like they just gave everyone a non english language to make the game seem more exotic.

[athanaric]

I think the year in history are quite low priority for EBII and they take a lot of work to make, the current ones will be in but i doubt there will be any new ones for a while.

Not entirely sure what you on about in the second part but if your saying that all the factions speak the same language then thats incorrect, there are 5 different main languages in the game (latin, greek, celtic, punic and persian) and some others are represented through unit names (proto-germanic etc). It's not like they just gave everyone a non english language to make the game seem more exotic.

Actually they used 2 kinds of Celtic, so right now there are 6 languages on the battlefield (which is quite impressive seeing as we're mostly dealing with "dead" languages here). I heard that there will be a Proto-Germanic Voicemod for EB II as well

[Cute Wolf]

better ai? this was hardcoded, and actually kingdoms ai is worse than those RTW with Alex..... Some random faction will start not moving at all until you (or someone else attack them)... The ai never retrain units, and their generals do suicide into my pike fence much more.... only RTW beats ai Idiocy...

---------------------------------

But actually I hope public order (law and hapiness) turned up, and population growth turned down...

[lionhard]

Sory i supose it was hard to understand. My questions have been answered thanks guys :), do we have a date on when its coming out yet or a rough estimate?

[athanaric]

[...] do we have a date on when its coming out yet or a rough estimate?

Any time between now and Judgement Day.

[iounas]

better ai? this was hardcoded, and actually kingdoms ai is worse than those RTW with Alex..... Some random faction will start not moving at all until you (or someone else attack them)... The ai never retrain units, and their generals do suicide into my pike fence much more.... only RTW beats ai Idiocy...

---------------------------------

But actually I hope public order (law and hapiness) turned up, and population growth turned down...

Worse AI? Ah crap I was hoping for an improvement..
What are other differences of rtw and mtw2 engine?
I like recruitment system and free upkeep of mtw and after battle ransom, release, execute..
I kinda think units are less responsive in the battle.

[lionhard]

over all will this game be better than eb1?

[Owen Glyndwr]

It's hard to answer something like that, because, quite simply we don't know yet. Because the game has not been released yet, any queries into the quality of the game would be pure speculation. It would be like asking in January if E:TW was going to be better than M2. SOme could speculate that this or that might be improved, but at the time we had absolutely no idea if E:TW was going to be a boom or a bust.

Furthermore, so much of that stuff relies on personal opinion and preference, that it is really difficult to put a stamp on any sequel saying it was better than the last. You may say that R: TW was the best TW game around, but I know there are people who claim E: TW is the best around, or still others who solely play M1 or S: TW.

Really what I'm trying to say is that we really can't say anything for sure. All you can do really is have patience, and come to your own conclusions when the game inevitably (I hope?) comes out.

However, one thing can be determined right now. That is that when this game does come out, we know it will come with the quality and attention to detail that we have come to expect from this community.

[ziegenpeter]

over all will this game be better than eb1?

Nah, certainly not. Thats why they are making it...

[Parallel Pain]

That almost made sense...almost...

Just had to say that

[Cyclops]

I like the guttural tones of the voicemods, they add real character to the battles.

My somewhat unhelpful suggestion is more regional types of recruitable generals, including ultraheavy foot bodyguards for generals from the Vasci area. However there is still the unit mix limit, so thats a bit of a waste of list space.

Any time between now and Judgement Day.

So its coming out before next thursday then? woo hoo!

What? Its in Revelations, people!

[Warspite_TW]

AI in the TW series is hard-coded, and the EB team can do nothing about it. They will act as stupid as they do in the vanilla game. However, EB uses the Kingdoms expansion, which features better AI.

Hmm... There are some modders who succeded in producing a better AI both in BAI and CAI (Lusted, Savage, Grand Viz for SS and BC). Maybe asking for help?

[Moros]

Well all rumours posted above aside some awnsers from an actual EB member:

Will year of history be expanded and incorperated?
Yes and some additional work has been done already. It will of course also include more history on the areas now better represented by new factions and I believe it has also been expanded in number of years represented. Though it is correct that it is low priority especially now when a lot of various concepts and historical/archeological research are still to be done.

Will the AI be better?
While I haven't played Alexander RTW, I'm quite sure the AI will be better than in the standard EBI. AI is somewhat modeable now and scripting wise ther'e apparantly are more possibilties. So while of course it's to early to compare, it looks like AI and AI expansion will be better. Also diplomacy seems to have been improved in MTW2; kingdoms as well. Also on faction expansion, we don't want factions to expand as they did in history but we want them to expand in a realistic way considering the historical reality of 272 BC.

Will the game be better?
History wise EBII to will be improved I think, not because we now have even more years of historical research on the old EB factions but also because MTW2:Kingdoms allows us to represent alot of things better. (Recruitment pools, variation in unit looks, more scripting possibilities,...) Also the fact that there will be an increase of factions and units which add to the variety withing campaigns and within the choice of campaigns and custom battles. And these are just a couple of improvements as there's quite a long list and a lot of it isn't even made public yet!

[Reno Melitensis]

I will answer only this question,
Will the AI be better?
Occasionally I play Stainless Steel on Kingdoms. The AI is much more better on the diplomacy side. When a Faction is bankcrupt and its armies destroyed it will accept peace if offered. A drawback is that the AI is willing to fight a multi front war, that will ultimatley leed to its destruction. Also a defeated faction will not ask for a ceasefire to to human player. The choice of troops is also boring, a lot of light troops and a small fraction of elites, the cheapest it can recruit. On the battle front it has the same intelligent as the RTW AI, easily defeated even on V/H, unable to draw a good battle line, moving troops fort and back when is attacked, but uses light cavalry and heavy cavalry quite good, generally on the flanks and charges ala Alexander. Also even under heavy missle fire, troops march slowly towards the enemy, mo need to hurry, some of us will rech the enemy, only Alex has a better AI in battles. So do not exept a lot from the MTW II/ Kingdoms AI.


Cheers.

[Andy1984]

In EB 1.2 most if not all cavalry units were 100 men strong (on huge unit settings). Will this number be lowered to make the infantry-cavalry ratio more realistic?
I'm not per se suggesting to lower the cavalry numbers of steppe or nomad factions, but rather to lower the numbers of the well trained civilized cavalry.

kind regards,

Andy

[ziegenpeter]

Also on faction expansion, we don't want factions to expand as they did in history but we want them to expand in a realistic way considering the historical reality of 272 BC.

Isnt that almost a contradiction? I think I know what you mean: You wont script the factions to expand the way they did in history but let the AI decide to expand, but (assuming we all agree in the theory of cause and effect) the most likely expansion "considering the historical reality of 272 BC" would be expansion "as they did in history".

Correct me please if I got anything wrong here.

[Moros]

Isnt that almost a contradiction? I think I know what you mean: You wont script the factions to expand the way they did in history but let the AI decide to expand, but (assuming we all agree in the theory of cause and effect) the most likely expansion "considering the historical reality of 272 BC" would be expansion "as they did in history".

Correct me please if I got anything wrong here.

no, for starters the players actions would alter the settings even if tried to play as historicall as possible. Also if we'd want historical expansion we'd need to autocalc the battles to have the same vctories as historically happened. we'd have to kill of phyrros torepresent argos. when considering the butterfly effect, having a longer living phyrros and a player acting different from history it would be unrealistic to have the actual historical expansion. Unless you want a game which gives no effects to players action.
Also it allows for game variation.

[Foot]

Isnt that almost a contradiction? I think I know what you mean: You wont script the factions to expand the way they did in history but let the AI decide to expand, but (assuming we all agree in the theory of cause and effect) the most likely expansion "considering the historical reality of 272 BC" would be expansion "as they did in history".

Correct me please if I got anything wrong here.

Assuming no such thing as a player in the world, you would be correct. However the point of no history on rails is the rejection of the "historical event without context". No julius caesar, not because we reject "cause and effect" but because the game engine simulates events that would effect the outcome. However, other parts of the game cannot simulate history (autoresolve between ai), which affects other aspects of the game.

In other words this is a game and a game engine. We don't operate under the hallucination that this is an accurate simulation of history, and design decisions must be made on how to best represernt history.

Foot

[Tellos Athenaios]

You can 'stimulate' the AI now to go in certain ways: a positive take on the Central European defense scripts of sorts [not a malus in the form of hordes of angry Eleutheroi ready to bash everyone who dare enter their turf].

[Saldunz]

In regards to the This Year In History, I have a question: I know it's difficult to represent the non Greco-Roman factions as those have actual documentation concerning what happened for those years, will there be room to add a bit more focus on what we know of the illeterate/semi-litterate factions? Even if the information is just supplied from the current scholarly theories or archaeological evidence?

I only ask because beyond the introductory faction descriptions, I didn't really know that much about how the Aedui and the Arverni differed.

That really may be asking too much, and I'm happy with the This Year In History as is. I know there'll be a lot of other new mateiral in EB2 to look forward too.

[Moros]

Well for factions like the sabaeans for example there'll never be an event every year, but I'll try to add as many as possible.

[Saldunz]

Well for factions like the sabaeans for example there'll never be an event every year, but I'll try to add as many as possible.

That's excellent news!

[Markus_Aurelius]

better ai? this was hardcoded, and actually kingdoms ai is worse than those RTW with Alex..... Some random faction will start not moving at all until you (or someone else attack them)... The ai never retrain units, and their generals do suicide into my pike fence much more.... only RTW beats ai Idiocy...

---------------------------------

But actually I hope public order (law and hapiness) turned up, and population growth turned down...

You should really try the xai mod for m2 kingdoms if you want ai improvement. From my experiences the ai has been vastly improved by that mod.

[iounas]

You should really try the xai mod for m2 kingdoms if you want ai improvement. From my experiences the ai has been vastly improved by that mod.

looks interesting.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgErfCum8VY

[Immortales]

Hmm... There are some modders who succeded in producing a better AI both in BAI and CAI (Lusted, Savage, Grand Viz for SS and BC). Maybe asking for help?

looks interesting.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgErfCum8VY

You guys are so damn right! It has been proven that it's possible to enhance the AI.

Please, Please include the AI mods!

Recently i reinstalled EB 1.2 after a long time. I enjoyed the unmatched historical exactness as usual but I was really turned down by the incredibly stupid AI. I don't want to even start to sum up all the failures it produced. Finally it destroyed my enjoyment almost completely. It is such a shame that the feeling of immersion is so drastically handicapped.

Please, Please include AI improvements!

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Btw: Why is it so goddamn hard to program a challenging AI for CA?
Even a Mod-Team can do wonders.
Just bring in a sensible use of these standard tactics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_tactics

Looking forward to reading your posts!


.

[Cute Wolf]

Thanks for that.... (I'll try that mod)

[Mulceber]

My suggestion (a simple one): fix the grammatical error in "quisque est barbarus alio" (should be alii). -M

[BerkeleyBoi]

My suggestion is that the EB team makes better use of Twitter. It seems like a lot of the chatter has died down after the first week of activity. It's a lot quicker than doing a preview and it keeps us loyal fans addicted as we wonder what that Hellenic mercenary unit is and gives us more things to chatter about here on the forums.