Against 4tpy...

[ziegenpeter]

Hi everyone!
I recently noticed that 4 turns per year leads, in my games, to a very unhistorical expansion. I am not a blitzer but even for me its hard to slow the pace down so that I can try to make my expansions somewhat historical. I am eventually playing a Romani campain and I am already in 239 much to far in my "schedule" (original roman expansion).
I think this thing could work if TW could represent the struggle for a region better than it does now. But since a region taken is even in harder game difficulty settings rarely a region you will lose again, plus this game (even with this formidable mod called "EB") has very few to offer besides conquering - and thus its all you do, I suggest to make it fewer tpy.
Like that it wouldnt take me so long to get reforms either. I mean seriously, for Augustan reforms* you have to play till 125. That NEVER happened to me.

Ok, maybe you can just wipe this thread awy by giving me hints how I can improve my playing style so I can get even more fun out of it. But maybe I just had another of my genius ideas

*apart from I was already voting against reforms and the augustan reform in particular.

sorry for this confuse post but its late and I am going to bed now.

[Andy1984]

That's why I play VH/VH. The AI will occasionally destroy one of your armies, so it will slow down your expansion. Other than that, the AI is obviously incapable to properly defend herself or to pose any threat, so you'll have to apply some house rules. My ideas would be:

- no expansion (or hardly any) in the first twenty years of the game
- drain your coffers by having a fleet
- rely almost solely on factional units (and do bother to send depleted units back to your capital for retraining)
- some people like to role-play, even going so far as to give regions to other factions. I'm not sure whether this is still possible on VH


In the end, house rules like these will slow down your growth. There simply is (hardly any) way to blitz if you refuse to hire mercenaries and professionally deplete your coffers. However, once you reach a certain size, you'll have to restrict yourself in order not to blitz the rest of the world.



From my own experience, I can say this self-restriction leads me to building out my cities economically, making me excessively rich. I'm not so much worried by my own wealth, but I'm worried about running out of construction options in several cities. This will free up quite an extra amount of cash, and make all my cities look the same. I wonder whether it would be possible to add more buildings to EB2, or to make construction times longer. This would, besides draining my coffers further, force me to have some specialization in my cities. (I really don't mind if these buildings would be excessivly expensive, take a huge time to construct and would add at best +5 happiness or so.)

kind regards,

Andy

[bobbin]

So EBII should reduce the number of tpy because you can't learn slow down? isn't that a bit much to ask for

Anyway changing the number of tpy is much easier in M2TW, it's literally just changing one number so you could mod it pretty easily. Thats assuming 2tpy doesn't mess up the scripts and whatnot.

[A Very Super Market]

If anything, the distance you can move your units in a turn is already shortened in comparison to real life.

[Azathoth]

If anything, the distance you can move your units in a turn is already shortened in comparison to real life.

Apparently, in EB the default action point value is 80, but to get a realistic movement rate you need like 500.

[Andy1984]

Apparently, in EB the default action point value is 80, but to get a realistic movement rate you need like 500.

Would this make the AI stronger or weaker? I'd think the AI would be capable to launch invasions deep into your territory, forcing you to fortify every city, every pass,... And if you besieged the AI will have endless stacks it will send against your siege-army. What would the downsides be other than a more aggressive gameplay and the possibility to blitz even faster?

[option]

Would this make the AI stronger or weaker? I'd think the AI would be capable to launch invasions deep into your territory, forcing you to fortify every city, every pass,... And if you besieged the AI will have endless stacks it will send against your siege-army. What would the downsides be other than a more aggressive gameplay and the possibility to blitz even faster?

It would make the game extremely ridiculous and annoying, for one. Realistic movement only works if you're willing to add many more turns per year - otherwise you get situations like multiple enemy stacks coming from out of nowhere and besieging half your empire. Not to mention it give the possibility of taking half a faction's settlements in half a year, along with forcing you to fight every enemy stack for a thousand miles around if you ever want to take a settlement.

Plus, if you think the AI generals forming insta-armies by recruiting all the mercs in an area is annoying now, just wait until they have 6+ different merc pools they can empty and throw at you within the space of a couple turns.

[Azathoth]

Well, hey, maybe instead of playing VH/VH the challenge-seekers could just raise the action points!

[Jarvgrimr]

This would, besides draining my coffins further, force me to have some specialization in my cities...

Oh dear, i think you're using the wrong currency friend.

[Krusader]

So EBII should reduce the number of tpy because you can't learn slow down? isn't that a bit much to ask for

Anyway changing the number of tpy is much easier in M2TW, it's literally just changing one number so you could mod it pretty easily. Thats assuming 2tpy doesn't mess up the scripts and whatnot.

Yeah but CA didn't bother about aging. No matter what you set it to, characters age 1 year every 2 turns.
Unless they changed that, but have a feeling they didn't.

[Bucefalo]

Yeah but CA didn't bother about aging. No matter what you set it to, characters age 1 year every 2 turns.
Unless they changed that, but have a feeling they didn't.

IIRC in Third Age total war (the mod about lotr), they managed to make characters age properly using 4 turns per year. I think the solution was creating a script that controled it, here is the thread.

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=255427

[ziegenpeter]

- no expansion (or hardly any) in the first twenty years of the game
so far as to give regions to other factions. I'm not sure whether this is still possible on VH

Thats what I usually do (sweboz f.e.) but with the romani that would hardly give me a historical feeling

- drain your coffins by having a fleet

Check

- rely almost solely on factional units (and do bother to send depleted units back to your capital for retraining)

Thats actually quite cheaper than having regionals but I do have botz and yes I send my legion back home to retrain

- some people like to role-play, even going so far as to give regions to other factions. I'm not sure whether this is still possible on VH

Yep with FD and I did that with that rebel town on wich the lusotanni have claims on.

So EBII should reduce the number of tpy because you can't learn slow down? isn't that a bit much to ask for

Anyway changing the number of tpy is much easier in M2TW, it's literally just changing one number so you could mod it pretty easily. Thats assuming 2tpy doesn't mess up the scripts and whatnot.

Gnahaaha very funny... But thanks for the MTW2 hints.

I admit that this time I am playing on H/H because VH/H wouldnt feel realistic. The campain AI goes beserk and you have to always fight stacks much bigger than yours and that doesnt improve my feeling of accuracy anyway. But maybe its a different thing with the Romani maybe VH is the right setting for them and lets pray that RomeSage works ;)

Nevertheless for me its sometimes just frustrating to proceed so slow in time.

Like that it wouldnt take me so long to get reforms either. I mean seriously, for Augustan reforms* you have to play till 125. That NEVER happened to me.

[Andy1984]

Oh dear, i think you're using the wrong currency friend.

I changed it. Thanks for noting.

[Atraphoenix]

against 4py?
I am planning to make a month turn system for EB2 via decreasing movement points dramatically so as to make blitzing impossible
that means you can conquer whole map in ten years like Alexander did.

[Horatius Flaccus]

I send my legion back home to retrain

Maybe try another faction (apart from Romans). Try Hayasdan or Pontus on VH/VH, that will be fun.

[ziegenpeter]

Thats true, the Armenians rock! But I will try to switch the campain diff to vh via romesage, because I cling to my romani campain...

[Smeel]

Though feel like you, that having the augustan reforms is kind of ridiculous(588 turns, yeah, likely to happen), I have no problem with the expansion in my romani game. It's the year 150-something, and I'm still within historical boundaries. And I'm playing on m/m Exstensive use of FD is the name of the game.

[Aulus Caecina Severus]

4tpy is the best for expansion, don t forgot the many turns for take a full control of region(barracks, administration, law building).
I think with less tpy the game isn t fun.
I hope for more tpy, maybe 6.

[Parkev]

I just looked up few things I'd written down a while ago when I was thinking about turns per year, I'm sure the EB team have done a considerably more in depth analysis (a few posts from Foot some months ago suggested so).

Now if my Pythagoras theorem is anything to go by a grid square in EB 1 is about 20km wide (I think I got show_cursorstat of Gibraltar and one of the pointy bits in the Persian Gulf and compared to Google Earth). Now the most I can crank out of a General in spring on paved roads is 14 tiles, the average is about 12.

So that gives 20 * 14 = 280 km per turn.

From this site http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/...opics/army.htm

Marching an army to its destination took much longer, even when depots of food and water were available. On his way to Megiddo Thutmose III crossed the Sinai Desert from Tharu on the eastern border of Egypt to the closest major Canaanite town, Gaza, a distance of about 200 km in 9 days [8], at a speed of about 22 km per day.
His progress through Canaan was much slower, about 10 km per day [8], probably mostly due to the fact that in ancient times armies in enemy territory generally provisioned themselves by looting the countryside which slowed down their advance.

Which references this site http://www.reshafim.org.il/ad/egypt/...of_megiddo.htm , which is a little out of the time frame (only 1200 years), but I think rough figures will suffice.

So 10 * 90 = 900 km per turn.

So there's is about a factor of 3 discrepancy, and even if those numbers are out by 50%, in the right direction, we only just get back to parity. Since increasing movement points effectively breaks the game, we're looking at 8-12 turns per year.

Immediate problems that occur:
1. how is anyone ever going to reach the end date?
2. easier to blitz (human and AI)
3. far bit of recoding
4. time spent at end turns would increase as a proportion of game time

To address these:
1. Who does anyway? Moreover, EB is a historical simulation of the world at 272 BC, the further we go down history the thinner the conjectures and assumptions as far as reforms will be (as reasonable as they are), therefore EB would be "more historically correct" in some regards.
2. Nothing some fairly severe winter/summer movement penalties won't fix, not to mention all the opportunities as far as recruitment pools and such
3. But what better time when porting to a new engine
4. Small price to pay

Personally, I'd prefer to play 20 years of a 12 tpy game than 60 years of a 4tpy, much more intense role play in terms of character development and one could actually exercise a military campaign in one summer season (train a decent amount of levies in the spring, fight a few battles, get home before winter).

But, as always the BIG but is; could the AI handle it? Or would the AI be forced to act in a way that would cripple it?

Just my Sunday afternoon musings.

EDIT: This wasn't the post I remembered but it's got the right gist to it

To change movement speed you need to edit descr_character.txt

The reason speed is much slower than the distances that could be traversed in 3 months is for gameplay reasons. When dealing with turn based strategy, increasing movement seriously damages any potential strategies as you and the ai have no chance to react to anyone's movements. Staging an interception for an enemy army is thus impossible because he would already have reached your walls before you had a chance to stop him. We have not changed movement values from vanilla.

Maintaining a standing army or navy was prohibitably expensive if they are not on campaign. This is not entirely fair as of course a campaigning army could be raised, if needs were high, in a far shorter period of time then we can represent in game (though EBII will change some of these problems). If you aren't on an active campaign, either for conquest or riches, then maintaining an army makes for poor fiscal management. Large Empires of course need and can sustain large standing armies, but smaller kingdoms cannot do so.

Roads, for example, don't actually represent roads in any particular sense, but rather represent a road network and all that entails. For example the Rome province starts with simple roads, whereas, of course there were some quite large paved road systems there, however these paved road systems were not the major road systems and did not connect the entire province together. The same occurs with farms, ports, military, etc. Basic farming doesn't represent the actual existence of farms in a province, but rather the trade network that allows for a concentrated and centralised distribution of produce to the benefit of the entire province.

Foot

More edit: I didn't find what I was looking for but did find a post by Foot from January 2007 advocating 0 turn recruitment for levies, or a massive siege defence script. Seems it's happened to all of us.

[Atraphoenix]

@Parkev
At first I tried to change EBBS with monthly system, 11 summer 1 winter but as you know we have more than 1100 turns in EB, many players are already blitzers. you can conquer whole map less than 500 turns if I add monthly turns that means 1100 x 3 = 3300 turns and a bit more.
To reflect the realism I have changed movement points and it works on RTW, BI, Alex , EB even on Alexander EB.
On the other hand as we have no chance to increase the numbers of the cities even in Kingdoms, I prefer to use second solution I still play Eb with it.

The Persian Royal Road was an ancient highway reorganized and rebuilt by the Persian king Darius I of the Achaemenid Empire in the 5th century BC. Darius built the road to facilitate rapid communication throughout his very large empire from Susa to Sardis: "centralized rule is the victim of time and distance". Robin Lane Fox has remarked in this context.[1] Mounted couriers could travel 1,677 miles (2,699 km) in seven days; the journey from Susa to Sardis took ninety days on foot. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote, "There is nothing in the world that travels faster than these Persian couriers." Herodotus' praise for these messengers—"Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor darkness of night prevents these couriers from completing their designated stages with utmost speed."—is the inspiration for the unofficial motto of the United States Postal Service.[2]

I have opted realism and I prefer it to game playabilty. But even I did not dare to increase movement points so as to travel from susa to sardis just in 1 Turn....
On my campaigns with Realist movement mods I find AI more agressive against me so it does not take 3 YEARS for AS to send reinforcements from Seleukeia to Northern Border (Margiane) even I find 9 mounts (3 turns) unrealistic.
so I have not had any problem on increasing movement point though I did not tested the possible maximum limit.

in my signature you can see my mod's screenshot (The realist Movement Mod).

P.S. I support levies should be in 0 recruitment but I had already got tired of modding EB, so I am waiting for EB2....
But I hate road-runner traits for generals (current EB system is fine) so I do not wanna try more traits to increase the movement points.

MONTHLY TURNS OR INCREASED MOVEMENTS,
I wish we had another solutions.....
(AFAIK enlarging map twice is meaningless)

[Atraphoenix]

here a screenies from my mod test :

the value :

starting_action_points 260

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Mister V]

I don't see the point of having 2tpy. We won't have the time to enjoy the game then. 4tpy means more time and opportunities for the AI, too.
I do hope that in EB2 we can mod the Imperial reforms to happen just a bit earlier, because I've had the patience to do them only once (and I didn't even move to the Middle East then). Usually I get bored before 150BC even without conquering a lot, mostly because of stack spam and constant autoresolves and retraining management.

[lobf]

I've been thinking about this idea for a while now. I have also noticed that people tend to have huge empires by 220BC, and usually end their games by 120 or sooner. 2tpy means that people will expand their empires in a more historical manner (since this game is all about blitzing... how fun is it to press "end turn" over and over again for several game years?) and perhaps play their games out to the end of the time limit.

It's not like anyone really needs 4 turns per year. Has anyone ever come close to running out of time in EB?

[Atraphoenix]

mate we have 2 types of EB Players mainly; blitzers, role players...
For example I am an early blitzer supporter to survive, (just think nomads)
then I role play after I have luxury to lose one of my army.

-you do not have to win every battle, defeats are fine.
-I even provoke rebellions after my faction leader dies, mostly increasing the taxes to maximum and leaving one unit for garrison.

-most players do not defeats, but there is no fun just win, win,win, conquer, raze cities , destroy factions....

-I am quite happy to role play unsuccessful campaigns, egoist generals' suicidal battles on impossible lands...

-so it is hardly to describe what is the use of having 4py.

- I still cannot understand what is the fun of conquering whole map, I am quite happy to stop after I have conquered 1 3rd of the map. later I role play as super power, I make my neighbours my vassal,
and I protect them from expansionist factions like Carthage, Ptolemy, Rome.

- I like role playing Xerxes I's campaign again and of course I retreat to Asia Minor after I suffer heavy defeat.

So we cannot judge peoples style of play, I never allow the destruction of a faction, even AS my eternal enemy is rested in Cyprus and their kings dies of boozing and womanizing.
So some may support 2TP, some 4TPY, I support 12TPY and 0 recruitment for levies and 2 turn recruitment for elites rest 1.

if you do not like the style of EB team has no word againt to change it even to release them for others.

our aim is jut having fun, I like having fun by modding it according to my perpective..


Regards

Atra