Italy should have more cities to represent Roman manpower

[Dunadd]

This post is a suggestion for EB II based on playing EB 1.2.

I've tried playing EB 1.2 as Carthaginians and as Dacians on the RTW 1.5 engine, on BI and on the Alexander Total War engine.

The Romans troop types are historically accurate (i especially love that Campanian heavy cavalry can skirmish with javelins, as they did historically) but the Romans' relative weakness in terms of numbers and their passivity are very unhistorical.

istorically the Romans had massively greater manpower than most of their enemies due to their system of conscription and allied legions. They beat the Gauls not because Roman armies were superior, but because they outnumbered them by a factor of at least 5 to 1 in the Telamon campaign and at least 2 to 1 in the battle of Telamon (according to WRG Armies of the Macedonian and Punic Wars).

They beat the Carthaginians for a similar reason - they could field armies simultaneously in Northern Italy, Southern Italy, Spain, Sicily and Africa.

Because of this making the Romans' cities just proportional to the population of Italy massively under represents their actual military manpower, which was out of all proportion to Italy's population.

It would make the mod more historically accurate and more fun and challenging to play to increase the number of cities in Italy and under Roman control at the start of the game in order to represent this.

(I say that as someone who never plays as the Romans, but as Carthaginians or Dacians)

Then Roman forces could fight in several countries at once (as they often did) and it would be a challenge to fight against them, rather than a bit dull.

The problem may be partly the Alexander engine here, but the trouble is that only Alexander has half-decent battlefield AI. BI and RTW 1.5 have aggressive naval invasions but very poor battlefield AI (in 1.5 especially generals often just kamikaze into the middle of my army just to kill some skirmishers).

Some of the AI problems could be fixed in EBII if Medevial II AI is moddable (?) , but more cities in Italy to represent Roman military manpower might be the best solution (that or having more than one allied Roman faction as in RTW vanilla)
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[antisocialmunky]

You posted this in the EB1 forum. The problem is the AI going North and suiciding on full naked gaul stacks. The EB team has said on numerous occasion that they will be representing geography in a fair way to all factions. Rome isn't going ot get more cities.

[The General]

Besides, you can recruit several units per turn per city/castle in M2:TW.

[Cybvep]

You posted this in the EB1 forum. The problem is the AI going North and suiciding on full naked gaul stacks. The EB team has said on numerous occasion that they will be representing geography in a fair way to all factions. Rome isn't going ot get more cities.

This is EB1. In EB2 there is a different system of capping units (low replenishment rate), so with this and a little AI scripting (especially the diplomacy AI) and the problem may not be as serious as in EB1.

When it comes to geography of various factions, I think there won't be many changes in Italy (unless a new faction in this region will be present). However, population growth values and unit replenishment rate should be adjusted instead, especially that it can be balanced in different ways - we can, for example, decrease population growth globally (because Huge Cities are the plague of the later games), but Roman faction would not be as severely affected.

[Dunadd]

Maybe - but the solution that worked in the original Rome Total War was to have three Roman factions. That way they didnt all go North. The Southern faction went South. The Northern one went North and West. The Eastern one went East. In other words the Romans did exactly what they did historically.

Despite the original RTW being historically inaccurate in all kinds of ways and EB being a massive improvement on that in most ways, the original RTW represented the Romans' historical behaviour and military strength much more accurately - and having just one Roman faction (which is meant to make the game less 'Romano-centric') actually results in it being unhistorical.

If in EBII we got all the historical accuracy of EB and the lovely client ruler stuff etc along with restoring the 3 Roman factions it'd be the best of both worlds and the most historically accurate it could get.

[A Very Super Market]

Exactly? You mean they were in Iberia, North Africa, Macedonia and Gaul in the 250s?

[Dunadd]

No - i mean that during the 1st Punic war (264 to 241 BC) they were in both Sicily and north Africa and attacked Sardinia and Corsica - and fighting in the Po valley against the Northern Italian Celts not much later (Telamon was 225 BC) and probably before and during the 1st Punic war too

The mod starts in 272 BC so that means about 30 to 40 turns in (at the latest), to act historically, they'd have to be fighting Carthage across much of the western mediterranean.

They also considered sending troops to Macedonia during the 2nd punic war (218-201 BC) and intervened in wars in Greece a lot after that.

But i take part of your point - that going east in 270s to 250s BC is too early.

So say you drop the Eastern Roman faction and just have two Roman factions - one in the Northern part of central Italy, one in the Southern part. Then the Romans have effective manpower far higher than any other faction (due to their system of conscription and allied legions, not to greater population) - and they also don't only go North, they go South too, coming into conflict with both Carthage and the Po Valley Celts relatively early in the game (or as soon as they get Tarentum from Phyrrus' Epeirots).

After the 2nd punic war they did expand in every direction at once - and thats still not that far into the EB period (after 201 BC)