First Impressions

[phred]

Didn't want to start another thread for a simple question so hoped I could get away with it here: am I the only one who has no pictures in the Encyclopedia? I have all the info but none of the boxes in any page has any pictures in them. Which makes the whole thing just a mass of empty black boxes. I can move the mouse over and get a tooltip which answers (most) of my questions but I can't help feeling this is not quite right.

I bought a DVD of the game but used the preload feature to download all the stuff last weekend. Perhaps that has caused the glitch.

Are you playing offline?
I noticed that when I was playing offline, but the pictures came back when I was back online.

[Barkhorn1x]

Are you playing offline?
I noticed that when I was playing offline, but the pictures came back when I was back online.

Hmmm...will check on that.

[Lord of the Isles]

Are you playing offline?
I noticed that when I was playing offline, but the pictures came back when I was back online.

A good spot - pictures are there when I go online. Thanks.

Ahha, it is more complicated than that I find, having experimented a bit. In summary: the pictures (hyperlinks?) work when in online or offline mode in Steam. But they don't appear in offline mode when your computer has no working internet connection. Not Steam, but the TW:RII program itself is using the network if it can while running.

Background (not meant to be a Steam rant, really):

For years I knew that Steam's "Offline Mode" was nothing of the sort, since it 'phoned home' on the sly. That meant that it could discover there was an update and then refuse to let you play a game until you applied it. Which sometimes left you unable to complete an unfinished game (if the update wouldn't work with saved games) or unable to use mods (until the mod maker updated their mod). In addition, sometimes you would find that despite having set a game to "Do not keep this game up to date" in the Steam game properties, from time to time Steam would silently reset that back to the default.

To get around that, I have for years been setting Steam in Offline Mode and not letting it start up when I log in. Then I always manually disable my network adapter before starting up Steam. That stopped the b****r phoning home I managed about 10 months at one point playing mods and a game version I liked without updates (while the forums were moaning about side-effects of updates). But this last year I haven't managed it since every month or so Steam complains about "no login information on your computer" or similar and refuses to let me run any games until it has been online. I doubt there is any technical reason for this - Steam is just trying to force people to run online. Sigh. And now the games themselves are being designed to expect a working internet connection. No doubt for good and worthy reasons but I'd prefer to manage my own system (but am clearly a dinosaur).

[nearchos]

I dont know if anyone have noticed, but i think that the slingers units of the game are causing more damage than they should.
For example, in a battle against Rhodes, playing as Macedon, four units of rhodian slingers, desimated 2 units of hoplites, ( the one was veteran), in falanx formation, you know, bronze cloud men behind huge bronze shields,so these units finaly were defeated fron militia hoplites and these were my haviest armored units, you can imagine what hapened to my other units.....
The same have happent, many times and with my slingers too, against well armored units.
Among thousants of thinks that need fixing..

[Quillan]

I dont know if anyone have noticed, but i think that the slingers units of the game are causing more damage than they should.
For example, in a battle against Rhodes, playing as Macedon, four units of rhodian slingers, desimated 2 units of hoplites, ( the one was veteran), in falanx formation, you know, bronze cloud men behind huge bronze shields,so these units finaly were defeated fron militia hoplites and these were my haviest armored units, you can imagine what hapened to my other units.....
The same have happent, many times and with my slingers too, against well armored units.
Among thousants of thinks that need fixing..

Slings seem to be armor piercing in game. Doesn't the entry on slingers say something like "average damage but good armor penetration"? Javelins do as well, but are much shorter ranged. I have a very healthy respect for slings in this game; even with armored legionaries they can't sit still under fire from slings and just shrug it off without major casualties, even in testudo formation.

[Jacque Schtrapp]

Just lost my initial campaign to an unavoidable crash at turn 236. Not enjoying the beta so far....

[Drakarys1402]

Extremely frustrated by the army cap. I am earning 20,000 denari a turn and have 5,000,000 gold yet I am relying entirely on garrison units to defend my historic roman empire as I need all of my 16 armies to be holding provinces I've just taken. Rebellion wouldn't annoy me at all if it didn't cancel all of my decades of romanization efforts at a stroke as th rebels convert my stuff to their culture and cause a decline in public order across the province. Worse is that CA is doing the bizarre thing where rebels get access to hellinic cataphracts and silver chevron elite units for no reason. I would like to know how the rebels have the infastructure and facilities to put better armies than most of my actual rivals into service?

If you build lots of farms everybody starts rebelling (because obviously the population is going to instantly go up: sigh). If you build loads of temples everybody is happy as they starve to death. It can be a very fiddly system and the subsistence crisis really adds to the difficulty. But it is so annoying and difficult to balance those scales especially as you take new provinces which messes the system up as the AI hasn't balanced his right at all.

[Hooahguy]

Please delete.

[nearchos]

Extremely frustrated by the army cap. I am earning 20,000 denari a turn and have 5,000,000 gold yet I am relying entirely on garrison units to defend my historic roman empire as I need all of my 16 armies to be holding provinces I've just taken. Rebellion wouldn't annoy me at all if it didn't cancel all of my decades of romanization efforts at a stroke as th rebels convert my stuff to their culture and cause a decline in public order across the province. Worse is that CA is doing the bizarre thing where rebels get access to hellinic cataphracts and silver chevron elite units for no reason. I would like to know how the rebels have the infastructure and facilities to put better armies than most of my actual rivals into service?

If you build lots of farms everybody starts rebelling (because obviously the population is going to instantly go up: sigh). If you build loads of temples everybody is happy as they starve to death. It can be a very fiddly system and the subsistence crisis really adds to the difficulty. But it is so annoying and difficult to balance those scales especially as you take new provinces which messes the system up as the AI hasn't balanced his right at all.

And moreover, if you go for the high level bildings, no mater what type of bilding is, ( religious, farming etc) its either -food or -public order without any serious ballancing by other bilding, ie a temple ofering a +20 public order against the -100 caused by the other infrastracture.

I think they must fix that as well, beeing a ballance between the types of bildings.

[quadalpha]

If you build lots of farms everybody starts rebelling (because obviously the population is going to instantly go up: sigh). If you build loads of temples everybody is happy as they starve to death. It can be a very fiddly system and the subsistence crisis really adds to the difficulty. But it is so annoying and difficult to balance those scales especially as you take new provinces which messes the system up as the AI hasn't balanced his right at all.

Does that actually happen? I've never seen it, and it would invalidate all we know about how population works. Maybe there was something else going on?

[Hooahguy]

Slings seem to be armor piercing in game. Doesn't the entry on slingers say something like "average damage but good armor penetration"? Javelins do as well, but are much shorter ranged. I have a very healthy respect for slings in this game; even with armored legionaries they can't sit still under fire from slings and just shrug it off without major casualties, even in testudo formation.

That is correct. Historically it was like that. Thats what I learned from Europa Barbarorum. Slingers were fantastic units, but were limited that they couldnt shoot over a unit in front of them. Hence they made excellent skirmishers, but not very useful once the main engagement starts as you will undoubtedly hit your own men.

If you build lots of farms everybody starts rebelling (because obviously the population is going to instantly go up: sigh). If you build loads of temples everybody is happy as they starve to death. It can be a very fiddly system and the subsistence crisis really adds to the difficulty. But it is so annoying and difficult to balance those scales especially as you take new provinces which messes the system up as the AI hasn't balanced his right at all.

You might want to look into some campaign mods which reduce the penalties of squalor and food shortages (and their likelihood of having). I posted some links in the mod subforum.