TWCenter site down - team post here

[GothGirlDanielle]

Detailed post. I hope these posts (this one and my previous one) are helpful. Just so you know, I'm reluctant to post pictures since I'm not sure how much info you want released on this forum. I can post pictures if you want them.

Playtest Report - Rome Rebellion Script

RTW BI. Playing as Rome. H/H. Small units. 603 to around 610 AUC. Using BW's saved game.

Pre-rebellion holdings: All of Italy, Greece, Bzyantium, part of Eurasia, North Africa (but not Egypt), north into Germany and Gaul. At war with everyone, but currently facing heavy fighting in Spain. Obviously, 85 territories.

"@Dani:
Thanks.....I think the main thing with the rebellion is to do three things:
1) Check the number and strength of initial rebel legions is right - are there enough armies and are they strong enough opposition?
2) Are the settlement garrisons strong enough?
3) Are the finances right for a) the player and b) the rebels? - do the rebels start spawning further legions? is it financially right - not too much into debt and not too much money...ideally the player should have very limited resources to see them through the crisis."

"First, the number and strength of the initial rebel legions is right. Are there enough armies and are they strong enough?"

Yes and yes.

You noted the rebellion was "random." I tested random last night with eight starts using BW's (Beast Within) saved game. The game is two turns out from the rebellion. Of the eight games:

- Six times the rebellion included Rome. Twice it did not (Italy didn't rebel).
- North Africa rebelled every time.
- Twice the empire slip roughly down the middle, with the Rebels to the east and my Rome to the west. (I'll call this an east-west split.)
- Three times the rebellion occurred in Greece, Italy and some random areas. (I'll call this a random split).
- Twice the rebellion include the lands to the North, parts of Eurasia (north of Byzantium) and North Africa. (I'll call this a northern split).
- Once only three territories rebelled. That may be been because I somehow didn't have the script running.

Obviously, a lot will depend upon how the player has progressed, what cities they've developed as recruiting cities, how much they've spent on armies versus economic development. In this saved game, most of economic development has occurred in Italy and Greece. Very little economic development has occurred in Spain, Gaul (western France), and Germany. I believe the only place I can recruit legions in these three areas is Massila.

At the inception of the rebellion, the Rebel stacks and units will attack the Roman player's armies. Most of these battles are pretty one sided, in favor of the Rebels. If you auto-resolve, you're going to loose a lot of armies. If you don't, you'll lose less, but you'll still lose some armies. So the practical effect of the rebellion is threefold: (1) remove regions from the player's control, (2) reduce the player's income, and (3) destroy the player's standing armies. Now, I've only my Roman History seminar, so I'm no expert on Roman history, but these feels very realistic to me.

Because of (3), I think the number and strength of the initial Rebel armies is sufficient. Specifically, I mean some expert players who arrive at this point with fully developed economies and by a slower growth rate (maybe arriving at 85 regions at around 700 or 750 AUC) will probably find the rebellion a bit easier. God help players who rush into it. I cannot imagine not having a fully developed economy on the other side of this rebellion. Well, actually, I can (see below).

One final note: random works nicely. I cannot predict where the rebellion occur so I cannot prepare for it - except to play cautiously and thoroughly.

Are the settlement garrisons strong enough?

If you mean the settlement garrisons for the Rebel Romans (and you must), then yes. One problem you're going to have is the AI will take units from the garrisons to attack the player. So the rebellion occurs, the player loses a lot of her standing armies, then has to scramble a bit to recover while the AI pulls units from the cities to reinforce. I've actually seen that happen in game at least twice.

Again, though, it depends on the size and strength of the rebellion. Here is where "random" comes in. Smaller rebellions, not centralized, will be easier to defeat than an east-west split.

This is why it's hard to say: "Tone, everything's perfect." With the right rebellion and the right economic/military development, this could be a problem, but not a huge one. With no planning and an east-west split, I'd have to think it's game over.

So, yes, a player could lose this game after rebellion.

Are the finances right for a) the player and b) the rebels? - do the rebels start spawning further legions? is it financially right - not too much into debt and not too much money...ideally the player should have very limited resources to see them through the crisis.

The player.

Again, it depends. If I'm still holding Rome and Italy, I'm bring in 30-60k a turn. If I've got an east-west slip, with the Rebels in Italy, I've got a treasury in negative numbers. In one game, I dropped to -112,000. Again, it will depend on how I develop my empire.

Maybe the better question is "Is it historically realistic?" I'd say yes. If I'm a Roman leader and Rome rebels against me, it should hurt and a lot. I should have to make hard choices, new allies. I might even have to run for a bit.

If I lose all my money, and drop to -112,000, then what would I do in real life. Stop paying soldiers, some would leave. Steal gold from the temples and buildings (destroy them).

If I've made wise economic choices, I may survive, but with the an east-west split, I'm more than likely going to be kicking cohorts to the curb and ripping down temples.

The Rebels.

I haven't tested the very latest, but the after midnight version (update 1855) seemed a bit more balanced. Again, though, it depends on the rebellion, who the Rebels are fighting, and so on. It's also hard to see if the Rebels are respawning since they're pulling from city garrisons, too.

I did notice it ever being easy or the Rebels not attacking me because they didn't have armies. Nope, that was not a problem.

I think in any case - maybe it's just play style, recovering from a rebellion will take a while - maybe 20 turns, at least? I didn't go into that much depth, but I can.

Other considerations:

Difficulty.

Yeah, it's hard. The randomness is sweet, because if I develop my cities, then, sure, I might be better prepared or I might just hand a nice, well-developed city to the enemy. Even if I luck out and end up with most of Italy or Greece, I'm still fighting one more, strong, enemy.

I'd be interested in trying to reach the rebellion myself, even on auto-resolve, just to see if I can prepare for it. Of course, that would probably take more time than you have before release.

Game performance.

I don't where to put this so I'll just toss this here. Graphics are up on highest settings but not running bloom lighting. Performance (frame rate) is in double digits both on battle maps and game map. Script runs smoothly with only occasional hesitation. I'm running the anti-ailising through my ATI card and have it shut off in-game.

The only time I drop to single digits is during night battles when I'm trying to operate at triple speed. In fact, I avoid the 3x speed button for RSII.

By the way, did you know that the sun shader (?) still glows at night? There's the moon over the mountains and, across from it, is the glow of an absent sun.

Okay, not sure what else to post. Hope all this was helpful.

~ Dani ~

[Paedric]

Remeber me never to ask you to write something long for me, I'd probably have to read it for the rest of my life.
I think the only thing that is lacking is your own appreciation : is it fun, did you like it? Is the dificulty rather hard, yet fun, or just too hard?

By the way guys, I think you now know what we expect of you.

[GothGirlDanielle]

Remeber me never to ask you to write something long for me, I'd probably have to read it for the rest of my life ...

Sigh. I wasn't sure how much detail to put in or how much would be useful. The last time I playtested, I saw Tone take people to task for writing something like: "I'm 80 years in and it looks good." Sorry if I went too far in the other direction.

As for appreciation ... I like hard. I thought the rebellion was fun, overall. It was certainly challenging. I'd like to have a go at it with an empire I developed, since I like to grow slow and build a very strong economic base.~

~ Dani ~

[Squid]

Trust me more details are always better than none, especially when they're good details.

[Irishguy]

I feel so guilty now for not posting as detailed!

[GothGirlDanielle]

Yeah, that's why I'm here ... guilt and awe. It's like shock and awe, only your Mom wields it.

[GothGirlDanielle]

Okay, one day soon I'll be able to edit my posts and my life will be complete. Until then, sorry for the double post.

Tone: I was studying Irishguy's rebellion map in Post 5 of this thread - in which he said the rebellion was easy. If you notice, when he went through the rebellion, he did not lose either Italy or lower Greece. This is consistent with my testing. If the Rebels do a northern split, as they did in his game, leaving the player with the southern regions, then the rebellion will be easier.

If set difficulty based on the player keeping Rome, Italy and Greece, it'll be much more difficult for the player who, in a random rebellion, loses these territories. The combined loss of income and places to recruit legions will make a dramatic difference.

Not saying you should change anything, just pointing out that this is going to be a factor in a random rebellion.

~ Dani ~

[DVK901]

THAT is one heck of a detailed bunch of feedback!! Great job, Dani. As Squid says, the more details the better we can see what's going on and how people perceive all of this. Thank you. :)

[Beast Within]

I second want dani has said to be honest i agree with everything.

When the rebellion suddenly happened i was shocked, i had shot down to -150k in one turn, i had lost all of italy and gaul. What remained were undeveloped settlements as i had only just took them. When i had come to the 85 settlement point i had actually stopped expanding in the east and decided to begin to provide them with some attention. However i obviously didnt get given the time.

I could of took the route of selling many of my troops, but i went for desperation, and a quick counterattack, i sent everything to the eastern coast, i rushed back several legions from gaul. Some of which had been destroyed. I had 10 fleets on the coast of greece, each sending a army over to italy. I decided that without Italy i didnt have a choice and that had to be my first priority.

I even brought back several legions from egypt and africa. It was a real struggle and half of my units were weak, such as levy pikeman and the like. Then the other lot were mainly older republican legions. I did have about 4 named legions moving into italy. Therefore i outnumbered the rebellion units in Italy probably 3 to 1. I probably lost 2 men for every one of theres, but even so my gamble payed off and i managed to regain, sicily, italy and some of africa. Financially i began gaining 80k per turn. I had reached -350k at my lowest point financially, however i plundered the settlements i took and brought this up to -200k which then inturn i was out of debt within about 3 turns later as a result of beginning to gain some money.

I think i will definitely try and push on too late game, it will probably take a good 15 years before my empire is even close to what it use to be, maybe even more, but currently it is stable, however the rebels are very strong in gaul and will take some beating. Cimbri have pushed me completely out of germany, boii and dacia have started to push down into my north east provinces. I have been completely pushed out of egypt by the ptolemaics and totally pushed out of iberia by the galleci.

Overall i think this rebellion is all about sacrifice. it is all about what you as a player are willing to sacrifice, no matter what i think every player, no matter how good the player is, will have to sacrifice something. My gamble payed off, but even so i had to sacrifice a good 10-15 settlements to other people beside the rebels.

If the player is given italy and greece, victory i think would certainly be easy. If not then the player will struggle, losing both greece and italy would be tragic i should think for the player, how ever losing one of the both, would probably be the ideal scenario for the player as for difficulty.


So i will try and push on past the late rebellion, see how the rebels perform later on, when they will have to produce their own troops and keep a close eye on unit production. Once done i will begin to start playing from 85 turns again, but right now my main priotity is:

To see how long it takes to regain the empire i had before hand

To see what troops the rebels produce


So i will keep you posted i have a lot of playing time on my hands, as college is finished, just the gf who gets in the way now haha :)

[dcmort93]

Hey I finally found you guys here and realized I had gotten a membership here before I'd even heard of TWC. I'm gonna leave on a 2-3 week vacation/college search on Saturday and as I won't have a laptop till next year and my parents would never let me use theirs, I'll post my almost finished Pergamon camp. up here. All I need in it is 5 territories so if you want me to start testing other things I'd be glad to start up a new camp.
Thanks

[tonyw]

Thanks Dani and BeastWithin, all really helpful stuff. It sounds like we've hit just about the right balance then. I guess the big question....do we remove the random factor from losing Rome seeing that keeping it seems to make such a big difference? (For starters there are the two praetorian legions to contend with when you do lose it).

I've set up the first of the advice pop-ups (for the Socii rebellion) but for some reason at the moment I'm not getting advice pop-ups to stay in view.....they disappear straight away.

[Beast Within]

@tonyw

well on my campaign i have only seen one preatorian legion wich was definitely a problem to get past, i lost 2 of my named legions tackling with it.

However in my game they made arretium their capital and that is where i found the preatorian legion.

So i think rome should definitely be lost. I havent tested it several times like dani, but going off her results i think we can safely presume that losing italy is probably a must, and would make the game ideally difficult, and would definitely hit the difficulty sweet spot if you ask me, i will look more closer into it was i have finally destroyed the rebellion, as it would seem no one has got too far into the rebellion, hopefully will be able to post some information on it tomorrow for you guys.


And good i think the advice thing is really a good idea and a good way to get round the events hope it works out, it will definitely be a good feature for both rebellions, as players may want to know, but also it is still realistic as the senate/people of rome would know of this unrest before a full scale rebellion takes place.

[GothGirlDanielle]

Thanks Dani and BeastWithin, all really helpful stuff. It sounds like we've hit just about the right balance then. I guess the big question....do we remove the random factor from losing Rome seeing that keeping it seems to make such a big difference? (For starters there are the two praetorian legions to contend with when you do lose it).

You're welcome. Very glad to be help.

DO NOT remove the random factor from Rome. PLEASE leave it random.

One of the key principles of game design (like I know a lot about it) is suspense and playability. What keeps me playing a game, tho, is the likelihood that something "different" will happen. If I know how it's going to end, and I've beaten the game before, then why play again?

I think the player should have a chance of getting a truly difficult and challenging rebellion or something easier, or something in-between.

Remember ... this is not a strategy game. It's a role-playing game.

~ Dani ~

[Beast Within]

@dani

i agree with your point but surely, having this massive rebellion too easy is just as bad as it being random.

Irish guy seemed to touch upon his campaign being to easy, and the common link seems not loosing either Italy or Greece, if it could be scripted that it is more likely to loose these areas or make it certain that one of these areas is lost then it is a most.

Just i would hate the fact that i was playing up to this rebellion looking forward to a real challenge, and then i get the easy route out, which could just be as bad, as having no randomness, however i get your point and i think your right, but if we dont make it certain to be difficult in this way, then what way could we look at to make sure that there is no 'easy' rebellion to squash?

[GothGirlDanielle]

@dani

i agree with your point but surely, having this massive rebellion too easy is just as bad as it being random.

Irish guy seemed to touch upon his campaign being to easy, and the common link seems not loosing either Italy or Greece, if it could be scripted that it is more likely to loose these areas or make it certain that one of these areas is lost then it is a most.

Just i would hate the fact that i was playing up to this rebellion looking forward to a real challenge, and then i get the easy route out, which could just be as bad, as having no randomness, however i get your point and i think your right, but if we dont make it certain to be difficult in this way, then what way could we look at to make sure that there is no 'easy' rebellion to squash?

Remember Tone has increased the Rebel's income since Irishguy's campaign was posted. All circumstances being equal, that same campaign should be harder than it was before.

I see your point, too, but not everyone is going to "look forward" to the rebellion, either literally or figuratively. When it hits, some people are simply going to freak. They're going to want to "go back and do it over" or somehow try to get an advantage. If I got to the rebellion and drew an east-west split with the Rebels controlling Rome and myself in control of a bunch of undeveloped regions, I might be tempted to go back to an earlier save and play through again.

Which reminds me of a loading screen that appears in Bethesda Softwork's Oblivion game. The team could create their own loading screen:

"Save often. The ancient world is a dangerous place."

~ Dani ~

[dcmort93]

Here is that Pergamon save I spoke of.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=A67PNFYE

[Paedric]

Sigh. I wasn't sure how much detail to put in or how much would be useful. The last time I playtested, I saw Tone take people to task for writing something like: "I'm 80 years in and it looks good." Sorry if I went too far in the other direction.

You misunderstood me, that's awesome, just have a look at Beast Within report ( just kidding here).

Since you are paying attention to details, what do you think of the launcher, and the menu; well all the way from clicking on the icon to starting the campaign? Is it user-friendly? Could it better (how)?
That's also for the others, but I've lost hope with them.

@ tone, maybe add something like pause/wait/sleep, well whatever makes the thing stop for a time.

[GothGirlDanielle]

Since you are paying attention to details, what do you think of the launcher, and the menu; well all the way from clicking on the icon to starting the campaign? Is it user-friendly? Could it better (how)?

Your launcher is great. It's intuitive and easy to use. Only a Luddite wouldn't like it. And a Luddite wouldn't play RSII.

It's all good now. I was overjoyed to see the return of No Battle Timeclock or whatever it's called - it was missing from the early play-testing menus. All the words on the launcher appear now, both on my Windows machine and my MacBook. The screens are visually appealing - stunning even - and Apple's music is a joy to listen to. I think the drop down menu is great.

I admire the way the team designed this game. RSII is most organized mod I've every seen for any game. The separate folders and free-standing launcher allow for easy future modification, even allowing players (I assume) to mod existing directories without damaging the original folder (by merely copying the folder and adding it to the drop-down menu. Future mods will be easy (okay, easier) to design and implement because you can draw from existing resources while creating an entirely different game or gaming experience.

Serious game designers could learn a thing or two from studying this layout.

~ Dani ~

[Beast Within]

As for the layout, i love it. I aint completely in the know when it comes to the computer coding and so on. But just from a general person who knows a little and loves to play the game i would say it is amazing. The design is sleek, it looks professional in my opinion, i have always wondered why sega havent came along given you a bucket load of money and took it all off you, it is honestly that good. As a package it is easily 10 times better then the original, even if you released it now without all the finishing touches.

As for the look:

stunning, i love it all, it just looks professional, nothing seems out of place, or looks too blocky, i love the images and i also love the new introduction to the faction before you choose your difficulty options. That was a really nice touch.
The launcher was a big surprise, i liked it lots, it made the game great both for the player and for designers to make the most of each faction and create the best game for each, it was a really intuitive design.

The music:

Creates real atmosphere, which is waht you want as music, i have quite often waited to listen to the song at the launcher menu and at the start of battles to the end, just waiting for it to finish before i began the battle of launched the faction i was running. I am a drummer and in a low key band, i also did music at GCSE and i know just how hard it is to make songs. Apple and the other cmposers have done a brilliant job.

Graphically:

Just amazing is all i can say in complete honesty. The only way you could make it better is having the ability to have different looking men within the troop like in MTW2.

Like i have said it is a total professional package, which could even be sold, it is just amazing. I love it and havent been able to play any other mods of games because i get bored, or annoyed when the water doesnt glimmer, frustrated when i dont see real sky, or real looking troops, all real music in the background, or when it is a pain to install.

Its a brilliant piece of work and you should all be really proud of it.