Rome 2: A constructive wishlist

[Myth]

A list for things to be fixed, removed, added or changed. Let's try and provide CA with something that can help them see at a glance if they're headed in the right direction according to their fans and customers, and if they have everything noted down. I'll edit the original post as you guys contribute more things.

Things to add:

- True hotseat mode

- Bring back the Family Tree from RTW and flesh it out even more, ATM generals aren't very interesting and easily replaced.

- City view in peace time like in Rome 1

- Naval transport ships that can carry a set number of troops at a maximum

- An astrologer/seer type of agent who has to do with research: speeding it up, stealing technology from more advanced factions etc.

- Seasons (preferably 4, but atleast 2...) and seasonal effects.

- Walls or some other way of stalling for minor cities.

- Generals & admirals should gain traits based on their battlefield tactics & tendencies as well as their record of success in battle (with appropriate bonuses). They should gain reputations according to these factors and successful tacticians should be renowned and feared for it. These factors should be taken into account by the AI when fielding its own force. The AI should account for powerful enemy generals on the Campaign Map as well when facing them with inferior forces. The mere presence of a renowned tactician leading a powerful army in an enemy region should affect public happiness for the duration.

- Factions should be able to negotiate peace agreements between their clients/satrapies and other aggressive states, or use the threat of military action diplomatically against aggressors if they don't back down.

- Bring back 'Give Settlement'.

- Bring back Fire at Will for all missile carrying units.


Things to improve/change:


Campaign Map, campaign map AI, factions:

- Campaign AI more cunning and with its own long-term goal whicih it aspires to. The AI must make better use of building slots, especially in newly conquered settlements or we will never see any AI faction expand to become an empire. If the AI is not sophiticated enough for that, let's give bonus and cheat to the AI factions to compensate.

-The ability to zoom out further on the campaign map

- Improved starting positions for "major" factions. No 1 province minors making super empires, no Epirus being wiped out by turn 10. The playable factions should be factors the player has to plan for and work with/around/against for at least the first half of the game.

- Allow us to manually enter amounts in Diplomacy -> Offers -> Payments box

- The AI calculation of force strength on the Campaign Map should be adjusted by taking into consideration that it's always fighting at a disadvantage to the human player, not simply factoring the comparable unit strengths when it comes to a battle. Understandably this is used to assess auto-resolve results, but as it stands now, it grossly misrepresents the AI's fighting capability when it comes to actual real-time battles. This may help the AI from bankrupting itself trying to replace its best units by sending them into battle with little realistic chance of winning. Maybe in cases where the player chooses to manually fight the battle the AI will withdraw after recalculating its potential for success when factoring in the human player as well, and look for additional strength from supporting armies before it reengages.

- Aggressive, Expansionist AI factions should act that way, regardless of campaign difficulty.

Battles:

- Better / expanded shortcuts for battle commands (we should be able to decide if we want our cohorts to waste their pila or not)

- Marines who fight onboard naval vessels for a living should get bonuses versus land-based infantry, especially when actually boarding. Marines should board faster and more effectively, while land-based infantry should suffer penalties during the first phase of boarding when only a few men have made it onboard the enemy ship and are surrounded by the bulk of the enemy unit.

- Cavalry units should not commit suicide by charging headlong into spear units under all but the most desperate circumstances.

- Elite units should be more aware of vulnerable flanks, and should respond to outflanking maneuvers/attempts when possible.
Skirmishing mode that works, based off closest threat proximity. Skirmishers should be much quicker to react to directional changes and have significantly faster acceleration and speed than any line infantry for 'Skirmishing Mode' to work effectively. When a unit is in 'SM' and an attack command is given, they should quickly close to firing distance, release their volley, and then immediately retreat back some distance to repeat this when facing a threat from the front. The effectiveness of this should vary with unit experience and quality. This would greatly reduce them being caught flat-footed by line infantry.

- Guard mode to be switchable and not " by default " as it is now. Guard mode can even replace the discipline concept from previous TW games ! For example, barbarians or non professionnal units could loose this ability when out of the general radius or when the battle is prolonged.


- Ability to zoom into the minimap during battles.

- The ability to line up troops on fences like in Empire / Napoleon.

- More diverse and more beautiful battle maps.

- The collision model. Units often melt into each other and have no sense of solidness or mass at times. There is significant clipping, where pikes in a phalanx will poke out the center of shields in the front rank. Horse heads clipping through the bodies of infantry, getting them stuck together. Boats clipping through ports, beaches and settlements, etc. and disappearing.

- Battle animations are often out-of-synch and units stand around looking at each other and not engaging. Men fall down and die when no one is attacking them, etc. This is a huge step backwards from Shogun 2!


Gameplay:

- Expanded technology tree with more options and longer research times (this will make the +research buildings more valuable). Possibly tying reseearch to knowledge points or other such resources generated by library class buildings. Make technology tied to the resources and provinces a faction holds. If you have no iron at all (not even importing it) it's not feasible to be able to discover better smithing and ironworking techniques. This will make trade and strategic localized conflicts for the obtaining of a particular resource more important. The tech tree should be complex with many smaller discoveris along the way, instead of a 1-2-3-Marian reforms approach. Play Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri and see how tech research is done there - it brings atmosphere and excitement in the game to the point where technology itself becomes more important than military expansion for most players.

-The ability to search for another unit while viewing the statistics of one, thus comparing them. For example, comparing Oathsworn versus Berserkers.

- The cities of historical significance should have more building slots - Rome, Carthage and Athens should be more imortant, big and full of high-tier buildings than a backwater provincal capital in the northern steppes of barbarian Europe.

- The political system should be refined and tied with your family tree and the family trees of your rivals. It should be more intuitive and the player should be incentivized to care about it by tools other than the potential game-breaking civil war. Every step of the way should make the player connect with the characters who are in power or striving for it and the decisions shoud have tangible results for the entire kingdom/republic/whatever.

- Civil war armies should not starve to death in 5 turns after they spawn.

- Allow us to garrison agents within cities. When an agent is garrisoned they are considered 'Deployed' until they leave that garrison. Add a visual icon to the towns name that someone is in there.

- Champions, and dignitaries have a lot of cohesion when combined with an army. The spy in my opinion is greatly lacking. With the current way the ambush mechanics work there is a % that you will successfully spring an ambush when in that stance. Let the spy increase that chance.

- More information regarding politics in the form of event messages. If my family is losing constituents (at a big rate) let me know. If I'm close to civil war notify me beforehand.

- Armies should not simply be allowed to traverse the seas with cost-free transports, and the ability to build them should be tied to the Tech Tree. This may help the AI with amphibious assaults, but it's a highly unrealistic gameplay device, ATM. At the very least, clicking a spot on the water to move your army should trigger a ship building animation or device which represents the building of the needed ships for use next turn, and deducts some monies from your treasury (costs should be carefully evaluated for purposes of AI use). It takes a turn to recruit a naval unit, why not a transport? ATM you can get instant navies on the cheap.

- Add a stance that has to do with the building/obtaining of boats to use as transports. It has to drain two turns' worth of movement points while the army assembles the vessels it needs to sail the seas (this is if you don't add actual transport ships). Also, if we are to use this system, make it so that provinces with prots will generate boats the army can "borrow" from the firsher folk and merchants, thus the process could be faster, while being stranded on the Lybian coast with no port in sight, with 1 tree per 10 square km. would make this process agonizingly slow.

- Fixe is the never ending blockades where you cannot attack the city from the land even when it is being blockaded by your ally/client state. For a few turns this may make sense, but there needs to be a time limit or stronger penalties for long blockades to force navies to give up.


Unit balance and Multiplayer:

- War dogs should be an exotic and niche unit, not the end-all, be-all destroyer of all things light and unarmoured

- Add a limitation on unit spam in multiplayer battles. 19 units of Spartan Pikes should be an atrociously sterile army composition that should lose to a better balanced one or one that "hard counters it". You can add two modes, a ranked ladder for MP and an arcade mode. Arcade mode will allow any unit composition and no limit on funds, and will have no capture points (you can corner and hill camp as you see fit). Ladder mode will have increasingly prohibitive costs for spamming the same unit or same type of unit, will have mechanisms to prevent camping and will naturally be ranked. Ranks will be held by battle size (10, 15, 20 and 30 k denarii), and can be filtered by faction and player. Thus we can see which factions rank where in the different battle sizes and so on.

- Add the Avatar Campaign map back to MP. I thought it worked well in FoTS, I imagine it would actually work better in this. You can create custom legions with custom setups.

- The capture point mechanic should stay for mutiplayer battles to prevent corner camping.


Things to remove:

- Armies conjuring transports out of nowhere and basically walking from Rome to Alexandria

- Units being able to destroy gates without siege equipment.

- Remove the unit limitations in Single Player. If I want to recruit 19 Royal Spartans or Hero's of Sparta why shouldn't I be able to?

- Ship-to-ship superjumps. Units should not be able to leap 20 meters through the air to board a separating ship.


Graphics/performance/UI:

- Add a way for us to choose which DX version we run

- Fix rain dropping frame rate dramatically for some players (again)

Unit balance:

- Add a few UI customization options. Nothing too crazy, but how about an option to shrink the size of the UI.

- For those of us with dual monitors - "Confine Mouse Cursor" so that way it stays on 1 screen.

[The Stranger]

heated sling bullets isnt even that farfetched, though it has limited use. but flaming javelins is just WTF...

To add:
-Seasons (preferably 4, but atleast 2...) and seasonal effects.
-walls or some other way of stalling for minor cities.


To improve:
-army movement speed.
-Client state system (what Rome1 was lacking, you improved, and what Rome1 atleast was doing ok, you removed...), its nice that they join defensive wars, but they should not be able to just attack you 1 turn after you subdued them... Sure, an uprising or rebellion is nice once in a while. But when you subdued a nation in to becoming a client kingdom i expect them to stfu and pay tribute.
-The province system needs to be refined. Now in my campaign Carthage went from 90+ happines to -50 because I conquered other cities in the province. Thats just weird. Cities should have happines independent of the province, and the province happines should be a combination of city happines and perhaps something else.
-better balance garrisons.
-more ancillaries and traits per person, combine with more negative effects to balance it out. And stop making everyone a lunatic.


remove:
units being able to kill gates without siege equipment.

[Myth]

CA is watching orgahs! Let's provide them something that perhaps they can make use of and as a result we get a better Rome II game!

[Alcibiade]

Sorry for any repetition but I feel like we need it for ideas to reach CA's consciousness.
Things I'd love to see changed :

_ A family tree would be amazing especially with Rome 2 time frame AND if associated with the present household pools, trait system and faction 's political system ! Yet, the traits needs to be introduced in response to the players action (like in BGRV submod for Stainless steel), as there seems to have no causality in the present system.
_ I'd ratherr guard mode to be switchable and not " by default " as it is now. Guard mode can even replace the discipline concept from previous TW games ! For example, barbarians or non professionnal units could loose this ability when out of the general radius or when the battle is prolonged.
_ Better BAI and CAI of course. More than anything the AI have to use building slots better, especially in newly conquered settlements or we will never see any AI faction expand to become an empire without immediate collapse. And if the AI is not sophiticated enough for that, let's give bonus and cheat to the AI factions to compensate. I really like this new city and province system ! And I love the army limitation and traditions too btw.
_ A different transport boats system.
_ No capture flag outside of settlements. I can understand the supply train's concept but capture flag confuse the AI too much.
`_Please CA slow down units movement and make ranged units less deadly

[Myth]

Keep them coming! I added a suggestion for MP ladder and how to balance unit spam.

[Hooahguy]

Im pretty sure that CA wont change the 1 year per turn thing, but we have mods for that.

Agreed about the flaming javelins!

And about the whole "throwing torches onto gates" thing:
Im pretty sure that was only done because you have to research ladders and battering rams. In my opinion, they should remove the torches and make ladders available from the start. This way it would force the player and AI to wait at least one turn before attacking cities. On the mod side of things this can be changed by just making gates much more resistant to fire so youre waiting forever for your guys to burn it down. Though that wont bode well for the AI.

And for town defense: I agree that its dumb that if you have even a slightly above-average force you can waltz into pretty much any town and take it over without much effort. Maybe like a palisade or something that can be burnt down unlike a normal wall. Granted then it becomes another siege battle, but as it stands the enemy isnt exactly coming out to meet you in battle so its basically a siege battle but with no walls. To add another turn or two to the AI attacking just have them wait a turn to "build" flaming torches" so you have some time to come to their aid.

As for transports, I think just making them really vulnerable in battle is enough. Make it so a few volleys of fire arrows sets them on fire, and how one or two rams sinks them.

[Lord of the Isles]

As for transports, I think just making them really vulnerable in battle is enough. Make it so a few volleys of fire arrows sets them on fire, and how one or two rams sinks them.

This. While I'm not ecstatic about armies turning into fleets (which I first saw in 'Warlock: Master of the Arcane', anyone know if that was the first game to do it?) I strongly suspect it solves a lot of the problems the AI has with planning & executing naval invasions. From the games I've played so far, that part of the Campaign AI is much better than in previous games with a 3D campaign map. The worst bit of it is how good large transport fleets are at defeating real fleets (when you actually fight the battles - my feeling is that auto-resolve does a better job and favours the real fleets). So nerf the transports in naval battles a bit and try to get the AI to use escorts and I'll be happy.

Aside from that, I'm with the OP Myth and his great list. I would add/stress a few points:

1. Rain slowing frame rates down to a crawl - really bad bug, fix asap
2. Still too many graphics/pathfinding bugs - e.g. troops landing/boarding from ships getting stuck, ships sailing through land in battles
3. Capture points in open field defensive battles - really bad
4. When AI factions make offers, we need to see more info - make our normal diplomacy screen available before responding
5. Allow us to manually enter amounts in Diplomacy -> Offers -> Payments box
6. Characters - esp heroes/warlords etc - really overpowered experience buffs for armies
7. In general, all buffs seem a little too strong - 3%, 6%, 10% for example better than current 5%, 10%, 20%
8. Slow down battles - both speed of units and length of melees
9. Get rid of flaming missiles (esp javelins)
10. Unit cohesion needs work
11. Replenishment rates tweaked: currently too quick for armies, too slow for fleets

[Spoonska]

• Bring back guard mode, but also add in attack move. It's pretty common place in other RTS's to have this feature.
• Move your Army's win-loss ratings to the top block of Army history with the rest of it's "Lifetime" History
• Add a few UI customization options. Nothing too crazy, but how about an option to shrink the size of the UI. Or zoom into the minimap during battles.
• Remove the Unit limitations in Single Player. If I want to recruit 19 Royal Spartans or Hero's of Sparta why shouldn't I ?
• For those of us with dual monitors -- "Confine Mouse Cursor" so that way it stays on 1 screen. This has been a problem forever, not just Rome 2.
• Remove Livestock from the game. Have the Cattle Pen give you bonuses to commerce, and agriculture. Limit Farms to 1 per settlement, and allow city centers to be constructed in towns. Hinder them though so you can only get lvl 2 or 3 buildings.
• Give me the ability to line up troops on fences like in Empire / Napoleon.
• Allow us to garrison agents within cities. When an agent is garrisoned they are considered 'Deployed' until they leave that garrison. Add a visual icon to the towns name that someone is in there.
• On the public order information screen give us a +/- net amount of public order for that Province.
• Champions, and dignitaries have a lot of cohesion when combined with an army. The spy in my opinion is greatly lacking. With the current way the ambush mechanics work there is a % that you will successfully spring an ambush when in that stance. Let the spy increase that chance.
• More information regarding politics in the form of event messages. If my family is losing constituents (at a big rate) let me know. If I'm close to civil war notify me beforehand.
• Flaming Pigs. Self Explanatory. As well as the perfect counter to elephants -- Flaming Mice (<- this one's a joke. The mice not the pigs. Please bring pigs back.)

I have some more, but it's hard to recall while at work.

[Hooahguy]

Get rid of flaming missiles (esp javelins)

I think flaming arrows are fine, it should just be a 15 second delay.

[ReluctantSamurai]

- The politcs system should be refined and tied with your family tree and the family trees of your rivals. It should be more intuitive and the player should be incentivized to care about it by tools other than the potential game-breaking civil war. Every step of the way should make the player connect with the characters who are in power or striving for it and the decisions shoud have tangible results for the entire kingdom/republic

Now THIS is connecting with your general: (from a poster at twc)

Probably the fact that my generals seemingly die every couple of turns for no reason, basically making it impossible for me to "bond" with them.In Shogun 2 (FOTS), on the other hand, I had a good number of generals that were with me from the beginning. I remember I dispatched one of my generals (he was one of the first generals I enlisted) to defend a city from an enemy force that I had grossly underestimated. What I thought would be a small stack army turned into multiple full stack armies. It was basically my general, the small force I dispatched with him, and the garrison versus a huge enemy invasion force. It had been way too long since I saved last so I couldn't reload and I was desperate to win the battle because I didn't want to lose the city. My general and his men fought desperately to repel the more numerous enemy force, firing as many volleys as they could before falling back to a higher level. Then, with nowhere else to run, my general and his brave men made their final stand in the courtyard of the castle. In an act of desperation I ordered my general and his men to charge the enemy ranks, where they fought hand to hand until they were inevitably overcome. I remember feeling an actual sense of loss and a rage that would only be satisfied by the utter destruction of my enemy. Now that's immersion if you ask me

Make technology tied to the resources and provinces a faction holds. If you have no iron at all (not even importing it) it's not feasible to be able to discover better smithing and ironworking techniques. This will make trade and strategic localized conflicts for the obtaining of a particular resource more important

This! It's such a basic idea to technological advances, it's almost criminal that noone at the CA think-tank had this in mind when designing what there is of the tech tree. It also makes trade partners who have goods you might need, and goods of yours that they need, vital. A good basis for forming alliances (or for putting a big bullseye on them or you)

- The capture point mechanic should only stay for mutiplayer battles to prevent corner camping. Completely remove them from single player open field maps (they should remain in urban fights)

This would be my first choice, but if it would require too much code rewriting, then perhaps something like this:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...ry-Points-quot

Military ships should rule the waves and sending transports without escort should be a huge risk

Yeeesch This is a no-brainer....a cursory examination of any military history era would point to this....

And 2tpy (like R1) would be sufficient to ensure a better immersion on the campaign map. 4tpy would probably require too much rebalancing of all the features that have their base in the time factor.

I don't mention the AI because it will never get done

[Alcibiade]

Make technology tied to the resources and provinces a faction holds. If you have no iron at all (not even importing it) it's not feasible to be able to discover better smithing and ironworking techniques. This will make trade and strategic localized conflicts for the obtaining of a particular resource more important

Brillant idea ! It just introduce something essential. But there was something like that in shogun 2 (or was it in a mod?)

[Sp4]

I'd like guard mode.

I'd like to feel more connected with the faction I am supposed to be representing, so a family tree would be nice or generally just some way to get more into that entire internal politics game.

2 turns per year, with a summer and a winter season.

[jbillybrack]

PLEASE get rid of the flags in single player field battles

[Myth]

Glad you guys liked my research tied to resources idea. It's both more historically accurate and more interesting from a gameplay persepective. Anyway, I improved the OP, sectioned it to make it more organized and added everything that is not duplicating my OP or another poseter's suggestion. These two I left out for further discussion because I feel they are not really the opinion of the majority:

Remove Livestock from the game. Have the Cattle Pen give you bonuses to commerce, and agriculture. Limit Farms to 1 per settlement, and allow city centers to be constructed in towns. Hinder them though so you can only get lvl 2 or 3 buildings.

Livestock has been used since the first hunter-gatherer societies found out that it's easier to eat domesticated goats than to hunt an antelope with a stick in your hand. IMO it's good to have variety over the previous title's single minded obsession with grain and agriculture.

Flaming Pigs. Self Explanatory. As well as the perfect counter to elephants -- Flaming Mice (<- this one's a joke. The mice not the pigs. Please bring pigs back.)

This I hope is a joke in its entirety. Flaming pigs are bad... Just terribad. I prefer return of the mummy egyptians throwing flaming javelins at lorica segmentatata wearing legionaires than flaming pigs.

[fallen851]

This is an awesome list, good work. I tried to find something to add, but it is very comprehensive.

PLEASE get rid of the flags in single player field battles

If CA does nothing else to the RTW II, they must remove the capture flags for open field battles.

Or at the very least, allow the defender to choose where they want them.

[Sp4]

PLEASE get rid of the flags in single player field battles

There is an option for that.

[jbillybrack]

There is an option for that.

Sorry, I meant the victory points, not the markers for units... And while I'm here, I'll say multiple auto-saves are also very good things that no one has mentioned, as far as I've read anyway.

[Spoonska]

Livestock has been used since the first hunter-gatherer societies found out that it's easier to eat domesticated goats than to hunt an antelope with a stick in your hand. IMO it's good to have variety over the previous title's single minded obsession with grain and agriculture.

I understand that, and I do agree with you that it's pivotal to history. Unfortunately, I feel that as an ingame resource it's undervalued. Perhaps removing it altogether would be a little extreme, but it could use some work. As it stands currently there are very few ways to obtain wealth from livestock. Lv4 Ranches every faction, but Parthia gives about 150-200 livestock. For Barbarian factions there is the Horse ranch as a third agricultural option which is another +140 Livestock. Eastern Cultures agriculture line of buildings do not even offer a static increase to livestock.They have to get it from stables military line. At most you get +100 livestock from the Nisean Stables at the cost of 12 squalor. All of these values are low when compared to commerce, industry or agriculture.

There's also very few buildings that with offer a modifier increase to livestock wealth, and often times it's paired with agriculture already.Now some factions have greater modifiers than others, and of course the barbarian factions have increased importance. However, the construction choices for those buildings are also very limited. Considering temples and ports do not offer any +% bonus to Livestock you're forced to do so in your capital. Excluding " % All Wealth" buildings, the maximum increased values for a province off buildings are as follows: Romans 80% , Barbarian 85%, , Eastern 50%, and Hellenistic the worst 20%. A minor side note -- Eastern factions can get a % bonus from the agriculture line meaning they can build multiple "Fountains" for the %20 bonus.Just to reiterate though, the highest static amount of livestock you can get is only 100.

When compared to other sources of revenue like industry or commerce it doesn't add up. Maybe it's not supposed to, but it pales in comparison. Your first choice in the Agriculture line of buildings will probably always be a Farm. It gives more food, and has better synergy with other buildings. I don't think that Ranches are competitive enough to be a viable choice.

[Sp4]

Sorry, I meant the victory points, not the markers for units... And while I'm here, I'll say multiple auto-saves are also very good things that no one has mentioned, as far as I've read anyway.

Oh yeah victory points are a bit crap in some situations, like when the game decides to put it on an open field or at the bottom of a hill or some crap like that.

[jbillybrack]

When compared to other sources of revenue like industry or commerce it doesn't add up. Maybe it's not supposed to, but it pales in comparison. Your first choice in the Agriculture line of buildings will probably always be a Farm. It gives more food, and has better synergy with other buildings. I don't think that Ranches are competitive enough to be a viable choice.

Don't you think we'll need that extra bit of food sometimes to offset the "-12 food" stat of certain high level buildings? I think that later in the game money will not be an issue, whereas food will be a huge one. I think they intentionally nerfed the livestock chains to encourage farm development, which would have been correct historically too, right? Wasn't everyone typically more reliant on farms than on cattle during this period? Anyway, I agree with you on most points, go farm over cow!

[andrewt]

I agree with slowing down killing speed. I don't agree with slowing down movement speed. If you do both, we're back to the current problem where it is almost impossible to maneuver because reinforcing units can't arrive fast enough to help.

Flaming stuff destroying gates wasn't a problem for me ever since I researched boiling oil. It turns gates into a deathtrap without siege engines. Like another poster, I suspect it was done because siege weapons need to be researched. It also takes multiple turns to create siege equipment. Personally, I find it too long. If they gave us some siege equipment at the start of the game, they could remove this.

Transports are too powerful. Similarly, ramming is too powerful. It's one thing to ram the sides of a ship but too often sea battles devolve into ships ramming into each other's front and hoping the other guy's ship sinks first.

Tier 3 and 4 improvements need less penalties, tier 4 especially. Improvements whose major benefit is public order/food need to be more efficient at doing so. What's the point of building a +12 food improvement that gives -12 public order when I have to offset that with a +12 public order improvements that gives -12 food? These improvements have little in the way of income or other bonuses. Their major reason for existence is providing food or public order but they are terrible at doing so.

[Alcibiade]

Something I prefered in RTW1 is experience. Units keep all their experience when they replenish even if most of the seasoned soldiers were slaughtered. Army traditions and champion's training points are already there to maintain experience in the ranks.
Another problem with that system is that units get experience proportionally to their killing rate so phalanx get experience much slower. Plus the faster units get more experience as you get as much from killing shattered units too.

[Veho Nex]

My 2cents:

1. Marine units should receive a combat bonus when fighting at sea. Land units in their brand new massive transports should receive a combat nerf when fighting at sea. Substantial bonuses and nerfs to allow your 90man unit to take on the 160 men that are suddenly sailing on the largest ships to set sail.

2. Turn transport ships into smaller multiple ship units. So instead of having 160 men on 1 massive ship have 160 men spread between 3 trireme size ships. It would require a rework or a better work around for Naval invasions allowing for more than 10 ships to land on a stretch of coast.

3. Add the Avatar Campaign map back to MP. I thought it worked well in FoTS, I imagine it would actually work better in this. You can create custom legions with custom setups.

4. Change the provincial happiness to set up on 2 levels. Level 1, City happiness: City happiness is increased if you are conquering other cities in the province and by other general means. When city happiness gets too low you experience rioting which causes units to take damage over time. When city happiness gets too low it starts decreasing provincial happiness. Level 2. Provincial Happiness: Provincial happiness decreases over time while a province is owned by multiple factions. If factions are at war with each other happiness goes down faster, if they are trading it doesn't move, if they are allies it will start going up. Making provincial happiness a slow changing thing so its more over a period of 20 turns to get it from extreme hate to extreme love. Provincial happiness can also affect provincial income. A province in turmoil will have more trouble getting goods out due to brigands and robbers than a province thats happy.

5. Fix shields vs ranged units. Right now it is not effective to slowly march forward in Testudo formation against archers because you end up taking more losses on the way there than if you just had them close the distance on foot.

6. Phalanx and Pike walls need a rework. Either they need a buff to frontal defense and attack or they need to hold their formations better.

7. A tech tree with limitations and more substance. Right now the tech trees in Rome 2 are the laughing stock of ETW, NTW, and all of Shogun 2. They laugh because its tiny and not very satisfying. Its the worst 3minutes of anyones lives when they look at the tech tree and realize all the late game tech is in all intents and purposes useless. You can conquer the world with Legionaires and Pre Marion units, all the economy buildings provide most bang for buck at level 2 or 3, naval and siege research is a joke since you dont need a whole lot of either. Philosophy is about the only line where the bonuses over time seem like they are good.

8. 2 turns a year please.

9. AND MY BIGGEST CONCERN. These "random" maps make it seem like every single battle was fought over a dried out hunk of hillside on the coast. Every battle looks like the middle east on the slopes of Mt. Everest. Even though there were fewer maps I really enjoyed the custom made maps of Shogun 2 and the beauty they had.

[Bramborough]

Awesome job, OP. I agree whole-heartedly with 99% of what's been expressed in this thread.

Some comments:

- Naval transports. From a "streamlined gameplay" perspective, I rather like how armies can go to sea on their own...I don't necessarily think removing this feature is the best idea. Furthermore, I don't think this is the real problem, for me or for most others. The issue isn't their ability to do so, but rather how powerful they are at sea relative to true warships. This does need to be fixed. Right now it's perfectly feasible to play an entire campaign and never sink money into a single naval unit, even as a maritime-focused faction that spends a lot of time trucking around the Mediterranean. It's also a secondary issue that armies seem to be able to go waterborne too easily...there does need to be a bit more of a "cost-benefit" decision involved. There's several ideas already posted above that sound pretty sensible to me for resolving these issues. Personally, I would advocate:
1) Greatly increase movement penalty for going waterborne, something which reflects an army sitting on the coast for an extended time, cutting down trees, building/procuring ships, etc. Perhaps requiring them to sit still for an entire turn to go to sea; no land movement allowed prior, no sea movement allowed til next turn. Meanwhile on subject turn, the army is in an increased vulnerability state, similar to "forced march" mode.
2) Substantially decrease transports' at-sea combat capability, perhaps to the point of nearly eliminating it. Bottom line, a fleet of true warships ought to be able to destroy any similarly-sized fleet of transports with impunity, and to be at least on even terms against a transport fleet 3 or 4 times larger. Right now that isn't the case.

Victory Points. Don't get me wrong, I'm not necessarily a supporter of victory-point flags in open-field battles. It wouldn't bother me if they went away. I gotta say, however, that I just don't understand the huge problem so many folks seem to have with this. I've played 200 turns by now, and fought dozens of open-field battles...and I've never once had to defend a stupidly-placed flag in a field engagement. Why not? Because I've been pretty careful about not force-marching armies in areas where there was a reasonable chance they might get attacked. A few times I have had the enemy army have to defend a flag...because I was lucky enough to catch them in forced-march mode. The solution to avoiding the victory-flag problem seems pretty simple...don't put an army in forced-march mode in areas where they might get attacked. I certainly agree that the feature could have been implemented much better, and definitely support ideas to improve such...but I don't see this as nearly the game-breaking, top-priority issue that so many seem to feel it is. What am I missing?

[ReluctantSamurai]

but I don't see this as nearly the game-breaking, top-priority issue that so many seem to feel it is. What am I missing?

Perhaps I am missing something, here?!? I though the flag for field battles was present for any and all such battles, not just ones coming off of forced march

1) Greatly increase movement penalty for going waterborne, something which reflects an army sitting on the coast for an extended time, cutting down trees, building/procuring ships, etc. Perhaps requiring them to sit still for an entire turn to go to sea; no land movement allowed prior, no sea movement allowed til next turn. Meanwhile on subject turn, the army is in an increased vulnerability state, similar to "forced march" mode.
2) Substantially decrease transports' at-sea combat capability, perhaps to the point of nearly eliminating it. Bottom line, a fleet of true warships ought to be able to destroy any similarly-sized fleet of transports with impunity, and to be at least on even terms against a transport fleet 3 or 4 times larger. Right now that isn't the case.

There are many other war games that I play that do this: a turn sitting in preparation, and another to board. Similarly, when debarking, no movement prior, and no movement until the following turn after leaving the transports. Point #2 is simply a no-brainer. Transports in any era had to be escorted from attack by hostile warships. It'd be like inviting the fox into the chicken coop otherwise

[Hooahguy]

Perhaps I am missing something, here?!? I though the flag for field battles was present for any and all such battles, not just ones coming off of forced march

From what I can tell it comes from being in a forced march, if you retreated twice and have no more retreating left (and as such need to make a last stand), and I think if the besieged sally out and you are defending against them, not sure about that.

[CaptainCrunch]

This is an awesome thread Myth, thanks for starting it!

Great contributions everywhere, but I especially like this one;

...Make technology tied to the resources and provinces a faction holds. If you have no iron at all (not even importing it) it's not feasible to be able to discover better smithing and ironworking techniques. This will make trade and strategic localized conflicts for the obtaining of a particular resource more important...

This idea is so legit that it's downright shameful no one at CA thought of it before. An absolute game changer. I wonder how difficult it would be to implement with the current diplomacy model?

I'll begin my two bits with AI specifics (I'll no doubt repeat/reinforce ideas already mentioned along the way);

** Warning, this post be a bit looooonggg **

IMPROVEMENTS

Battle AI:

• Unit cohesion does not exist at the moment. I believe this is the single biggest weakness of the AI. If this one thing can be addressed it will improve the AI's fighting effectiveness by several orders of magnitude. Professional units being led by a general need to behave as a unified force, not individual units behaving on their own. The AI needs to account for its own supporting units and how to best arrange its battle line according to its strengths and weaknesses, and the reputation/ability of their general (<- see below Additions). They need to more or less move together and be 'aware' of the friendly units next to them. The more experienced or disciplined the units, the more likely this should be, with the appropriate amount of gaps in the battle line according to these variables accounted for.
  
• AI armies should employ Defensive/Balanced/Offensive stances according to the compositions of their own force and that of their opponents', and the reputation/ability of the generals. The AI should never just simply throw its entire force at the enemy in one chaotic blob when they close to engagement distance. AI armies should variate in their battle capabilities according to their generals' tactical tendencies and reputation.
  
• AI units should not chase units that are vulnerable to it all over the map without any regard for their own safety or separation from the main force. Examples; spear infantry exhausting themselves and turning their backs on missile units while chasing cavalry all over the map -or- melee infantry breaking ranks and falling against an entire enemy battle line because some peltasts looked like an easy target.
  
• Cavalry units should not commit suicide by charging headlong into spear units under all but the most desperate circumstances.
  
• Missile units should not commit suicide by charging a battle line like first wave assault infantry. They should try to avoid melee combat at all costs and stay just in range of their missile capability, especially crack veteran units. The higher the unit veterancy, the quicker they should react to the changing battle field.
  
• Generally, unit morale needs to be looked at carefully. This, along with poor & non-cohesive AI tactics, results in the AI often getting routed in seconds.
  
• Conversely, elite units that become exhausted should suffer greater penalties to morale. Currently, some elite units can keep fighting well after they've become exhausted against enemies who are fresh or just winded. Exhausted means you can hardly lift up your arms, much less fight effectively.
  
• Elite/disciplined units who are meant to fight in formation (and who are not exhausted) should hold formation much better during battle, particularly when compared to less professional units.
• Elite units should be more aware of vulnerable flanks, and should respond to outflanking maneuvers/attempts when possible.
  
• Skirmishing mode that works, based off closest threat proximity. Skirmishers should be much quicker to react to directional changes and have significantly faster acceleration and speed than any line infantry for 'Skirmishing Mode' to work effectively. When a unit is in 'SM' and an attack command is given, they should quickly close to firing distance, release their volley, and then immediately retreat back some distance to repeat this when facing a threat from the front. The effectiveness of this should vary with unit experience and quality. This would greatly reduce them being caught flat-footed by line infantry.
  

Naval Battles:

• The effectiveness of troop transports needs rebalancing in relation to naval units. Transports are too powerful, being fast & maneuverable enough by comparison to make all naval vessels extremely vulnerable to boarding (which brings their necessity into question as a consequence). Most naval vessels can't survive a boarding by even cheap militia infantry. Why have an expensive navy when you can simply put a bunch of cheap infantry and missile units out to sea for free and have a much more effective force? Transports are heavy and carry significantly more troops and material than do purpose-built naval warships, they should accelerate (key!)& maneuver much slower as a consequence. They should be extremely vulnerable to warships and require naval escorts to transit safely through contested waters.
  
• Marines who fight onboard naval vessels for a living should get bonuses versus land-based infantry, especially when actually boarding. Marines should board faster and more effectively, while land-based infantry should suffer penalties during the first phase of boarding when only a few men have made it onboard the enemy ship and are surrounded by the bulk of the enemy unit.
  
• It should be much more difficult for a transport to trap & board a naval vessel with little to no hull damage, not simply get close enough to suction itself to it. Why can't a naval vessel backwater right after 'melee mode' begins from a simple brush with a transport? Only a few men have made it onboard, land units can disengage from battle, so should capable naval units. They shouldn't get frozen in place when they're free to back out.
  
• Conversely, ships of any type with excessive hull damage should be very vulnerable to boarding and should not be able to backwater fast enough to disengage. Same goes for naval vessels that have been trapped from both sides by transports. As it stands now, I can trap, freeze & board any AI naval vessel with any transport by simply getting close to it from one side.
  
• Obviously, beach landings need to be looked at, as they are buggy and often entire units that get stuck in the graphics get sent to oblivion ("Numba Ten!" )

Campaign AI:

• The AI calculation of force strength on the Campaign Map should be adjusted by taking into consideration that it's always fighting at a disadvantage to the human player, not simply factoring the comparable unit strengths when it comes to a battle. Understandably this is used to assess auto-resolve results, but as it stands now, it grossly misrepresents the AI's fighting capability when it comes to actual real-time battles. This may help the AI from bankrupting itself trying to replace its best units by sending them into battle with little realistic chance of winning. Maybe in cases where the player chooses to manually fight the battle the AI will withdraw after recalculating its potential for success when factoring in the human player as well, and look for additional strength from supporting armies before it reengages.
  
• Aggressive, Expansionist AI factions should act that way, regardless of campaign difficulty.
  
• Campaign AI is generally too passive, it needs stimulation both militarily & diplomatically. This doesn't mean illogically spamming full-stack attacking armies every other turn, but factions should look to reach objective-oriented goals, first through proper economic management and diplomacy, then militarily.
  
• AI factions should first look for diplomatic solutions when faced with a potential threat, especially from the player, rather than choose inevitable destruction by way of incompetent stubborn diplomacy that takes no consideration whatsoever of the economic & military might of a potential aggressor state. More diplomatic options should be available. As it stands, the diplomacy mechanic is very basic, generally requiring you to move up a ladder by either first establishing a Non Aggression or Trade Agreement, then moving to Defensive Alliance, etc. etc. This is too linear and rigid.

General:

• The collision model. Units often melt into each other and have no sense of solidness or mass at times. There is significant clipping, where pikes in a phalanx will poke out the center of shields in the front rank. Horse heads clipping through the bodies of infantry, getting them stuck together. Boats clipping through ports, beaches and settlements, etc. and disappearing.
• Battle animations are often out-of-synch and units stand around looking at each other and not engaging. Men fall down and die when no one is attacking them, etc. This is a huge step backwards from Shogun 2!
• Happiness and Squalor should be region dependent, not provincial. The attempt to streamline micromanagement is understandable, but the way these 2 components are now is counter-intuitive. Squalor is in itself counter-intuitive and needs to be rebalanced, as of now I feel it's poorly implemented as a gameplay mechanic, not to mention irrational.
  
• Armies should not simply be allowed to traverse the seas with cost-free transports, and the ability to build them should be tied to the Tech Tree. This may help the AI with amphibious assaults, but it's a highly unrealistic gameplay device, ATM. At the very least, clicking a spot on the water to move your army should trigger a ship building animation or device which represents the building of the needed ships for use next turn, and deducts some monies from your treasury (costs should be carefully evaluated for purposes of AI use). It takes a turn to recruit a naval unit, why not a transport? ATM you can get instant navies on the cheap. As already mentioned, transports should also be highly vulnerable to attacks from enemy warships, and need naval escort.
  
• Foot speed during battles needs to be reduced, as it is now some units like Light Hoplites are absolutely bonkers! If you consider the scale of the battle map in relation to their speed some of the units are moving superhumanly fast. It's not every unit, but the fastest units need to get looked at again. There is very little difference between the speed of mounted units and the fastest foot soldiers. This is a real problem for the AI, as it already cannot keep its units together when advancing to meet an enemy.

Additions:

• Generals & admirals should gain traits based on their battlefield tactics & tendencies as well as their record of success in battle (with appropriate bonuses). They should gain reputations according to these factors and successful tacticians should be renowned and feared for it. These factors should be taken into account by the AI when fielding its own force. The AI should account for powerful enemy generals on the Campaign Map as well when facing them with inferior forces. The mere presence of a renowned tactician leading a powerful army in an enemy region should affect public happiness for the duration.
  
• Bring back the Family Tree from RTW and flesh it out even more, ATM generals aren't very interesting and easily replaced.
  
• Factions should be able to negotiate peace agreements between their clients/satrapies and other aggressive states, or use the threat of military action diplomatically against aggressors if they don't back down.
  
• Bring back 'Give Settlement'.
  
• At least 2 turns per year, Summer - Winter, appropriately reflected on the Campaign and Battle maps.
  
• Bring back Fire at Will for all missile carrying units.

Removed/Scrapped:

• Any flaming magic missile, with the exception of arrows from foot archers. And these should have their rate of fire appropriately reduced. No flaming javelins, or arrows from horse archers, etc. This is laughably nonsensical.
  
• All Capture Points from single player open battles. The AI simply cannot deal with these properly and they are incredibly gamey. Tactical deployment options in open battles are now broken in the current state because the player is forced to deploy in the small Capture Point area which invariably holds no strategic significance in any random battle map. The AI will also rush to the Capture Point, totally oblivious to its own safety and whether or not its being destroyed by the player in the process. I've routed multiple units of Royal Spartans with militia hoplites because of this! I would rather all capture points be removed period, but I'm still considering workable alternatives for siege battles and multiplayer. At the very least, a central Capture Point in a settlement should only be considered captured if the player takes it with the majority of his attacking force. This way a player can't okiedoke the AI and tie it up while a single unit of men slip in the back and take the CP. This makes the AI simultaneously rout whether or not they're winning the pitched battle elsewhere on the map!
  
• Destruction of fortification gates with torches.
  
• Ship-to-ship superjumps. Units should not be able to leap 20 meters through the air to board a separating ship. C'mon.

Ok lemme stop now!

[ReluctantSamurai]

It's also a secondary issue that armies seem to be able to go waterborne too easily

Not sure I can agree with this...

Too many times I've read where land-locked factions suddenly become the world's greatest mariners and go sailing off halfway around the known world to attack an enemy faction, that by all rights, they would not even come into contact with in any foreseeable future. I'm not suggesting that R2 needs to be a historical simulator, but some levity is necessary, I think.

[jbillybrack]

Awesome job, OP. I agree whole-heartedly with 99% of what's been expressed in this thread.
Victory Points. Don't get me wrong, I'm not necessarily a supporter of victory-point flags in open-field battles. It wouldn't bother me if they went away. I gotta say, however, that I just don't understand the huge problem so many folks seem to have with this. I've played 200 turns by now, and fought dozens of open-field battles...and I've never once had to defend a stupidly-placed flag in a field engagement. Why not? Because I've been pretty careful about not force-marching armies in areas where there was a reasonable chance they might get attacked. A few times I have had the enemy army have to defend a flag...because I was lucky enough to catch them in forced-march mode. The solution to avoiding the victory-flag problem seems pretty simple...don't put an army in forced-march mode in areas where they might get attacked. I certainly agree that the feature could have been implemented much better, and definitely support ideas to improve such...but I don't see this as nearly the game-breaking, top-priority issue that so many seem to feel it is. What am I missing?

It's just, couldn't they have implemented a deployable "baggage train"? I understand the need to put you at a disadvantage running all over the campaign map, but I wish you could set the victory point within your deployable zone. Overall, I'm loving this game bugs and bad AI and all. I love the province control, because it forces you to slow the steam roll down a little bit, and sometimes drags it to a screeching halt. I just wanna choose where the victory point is

[fallen851]

I don't like the way I need to control G to get my units to stay in formation. This should happen automatically... not game breaking, just really annoying. I don't spend all my time lining up my guys just so they can break formation.