Storms at Sea

[Red Harvest]

You are certainly right, however, would it be as it was in real history conditions, the factor of random occurance of storms would be too strong and decisive. Games are designed to be won by wits, not a randomize function :)) (To some degree)

True to some extent, but as you will note, historically the better sailors avoided getting caught in the storms. So admiral/crew quality could impact whether or not losses are incurred. Weak crews would be more likely to lose their boats, and weak admirals would be more likely to be caught in a storm.

Randomization is good when historically representative, esp. when you still have some chance of influencing it through proper tactics/strategy.

Right now there are insane numbers of boats in the water doing very little. Being put to sea should carry quite a bit of risk.

It would be interesting to see the boats staying in port except to conduct missions. Blockades would bet more challenging! Fleets presently have little purpose. I conduct all my senate missions and invasions with a grand total of four boats (in two fleets)...and I really don't need two of the boats, they are just overkill. I finished my Julii without failing at a single senate mission, and in most cases succeeded on the 2nd turn after it was assigned. Repeating sequence: blockade some Carthaginian fleet, blockade one of Gaul's ports, sieze the port's settlement.

I've still never seen a storm on the strategic map.

[Red Harvest]

I found the descr_disasters.txt file for the campaign. Anyone know which way the storm index works? Does frequency increase if the value is higher, or lower?

Interesting that the only disaster I've ever seen in all my many campaigns is the volcano... It has the highest value (50), I guess I'll try higher values for storms. Wonder what the "horde" at sea is?

[Red Harvest]

Ok, I've tried changing the "frequency" of storms "at sea" from 4 (original) to 0.01, to 100 and 1. None of them have produced a single storm in 10 year (20 turn) tests wth Carthage where I built up a ~20 boats and spread them around the western and central med. I haven't tried negative values or zero...yet.

I also tried adding a copy of the file into the imperical campaign folder (where it was absent) and editing it from there.

Conclusion: the feature is badly broken.

[ghostcamel]

Nice work findding the .txt file for it at least. Closest i found was the climate series. Disasters...go figure

[therother]

I know of this thread over at the TWC, which principally discusses battle weather, but they briefly touch on campaign storms.

Midway down, DrJambo says:

I may be wrong, but I think that when modifying files that are included in the same folder as the campaign text files (e.g. disasters, terrain, etc), the effects may only take effect when a new campaign is started. I.e. changes will not affect saved games.

Also, can I suggest using the toggle_fow RomeShell command - it will make monitoring for storms much easier, as it removes the fog of war, allowing you to monitor the whole map.

HTH.

[Red Harvest]

therother,

Yes, I started a new campaign each time, because I suspected that the effect would only apply to new campaigns. I had forgotten about the fog of war tweak. I did however, have at ~25% of the total Med. within my field of view and ~50% locally. I never witnessed a storm. I did see Etna erupt in 263 B.C. once.

I suspect that either the "at sea" syntax is incorrect in CA's file (or unsupported and instead hardcoded or scripted), or that the max frequency is 1 per year and is applied/distributed to ALL sea tiles. I haven't counted them, but this could make the probability of an individual tile or region ever getting a storm as being rather rare. That was why I tried 0.01. It is also limited to winter, with Floods on land limited to summer. It is still clear though that storms are rarer than hen's teeth and about as relevant in the game mechanics.

There was another file or two that has events listed, like an Etna eruption, an earthquake, and a flood all on specific tiles.

My fix right now is to eliminate all Roman ships from the descrip_strat file at the start of the campaign since Rome had no navy in 270 B.C. I also got rid of Gaul's boat. I've also made all ships two turn builds or greater (just made the 1's into 2's, and left 2's as 2's, 3's as 3's.) That should slow down the silly naval buildup.

[therother]

Just completed a few tests, and I couldn't get a naturally occurring storm to appear either. I fiddled with the descr_disasters.txt file, even going as far as deliberately corrupting and removing it, but it made no difference to the game, so far as I could tell.

The RTR guys claim to have:

Increased the probability of some natural disasters occurring. Storms can now happen over land as well as sea.

I've not played with the mod, so I can't testify if they've been successful or not. Perhaps someone who has been playing with it could let us know?

Edit: This is the RTR 3.2 entry for storm in the descr_disasters.txt file:

event		storm
frequency	3
winter		false
summer		false
warning		false
region		the sea
min_scale	2
max_scale	5

Only changes that I can see are that winter is now false, and frequency has been changed to 3 instead of 4.

End of Edit.

I've also made all ships two turn builds or greater (just made the 1's into 2's, and left 2's as 2's, 3's as 3's.) That should slow down the silly naval buildup.

My concern with this mod would be if the AI is still trying to build as many boats as before, i.e. its build priorities haven't changed. If it is, it would mean that the Ai is even more crippled as a result of the added build times. Have you noticed the AI compensating for the added build times by training more land units?

Ideally, we would like a solution that either results in the AI concentrating more on land armies or the AI using its naval superiority to better effect, or indeed both.