Announcing: Europa Barbarorum

[khelvan]

With the new unit cost, will there be a shift to raising armies only when they are needed, instead of now in CA's version where you can maintain huge stacks that just sit around? And if there is a shift, will mercenaries play a bigger role with the AI and Human armies due to the need for troops very fast?

Mercenaries will likely play a bigger role, due to their availability. Raising units will not be as easy as it was. This is not due to build times, but simple availability in terms of area.

We are planning on having a faction be able to support a given number of troops on a per province ratio. This will be the standing army. Creating larger armies will quickly bankrupt the player if they are not disbanded quickly, or they don't do their job of taking new territories.

Elite units will in some cases take longer to build than lesser troops, but the difference is not measured in years. However, this is taken on a unit by unit basis, and faction by faction. Different cultures gathered, equipped, and trained troops in various ways.

Forts and watchtowers - we can make them look better, but we can't change their function.

Unit completion - we aim for 50% of all units (aboug 250) to be done by mid-April, when we aim to release the open beta. Faction rosters will be fleshed out before regionals and rebels, for the most part. *

We are prioritizing units based on holes in faction rosters, and the ability to share the new model with other units (thus fleshing out other rosters as well). All new factions will be in 0.5, much less the open beta. Most of the back-end systems will be in the beta, though one of the purposes of the beta is to pound hard on them to see how they work over the long term with a large number of players. The beta will lack, mostly, the bells and whistles of the finished product, like voices, graphics, some music, that sort of thing.

* Note: All dates provided are very rough estimates, and not intended as a predictor of any sort. EB reserves the right to adjust this date based on our own schedules, real life interruptions, bugs encountered, whimsical musings, or for any damn reason we please. Complaints that we have not met an expected date will fall on deaf ears, and will likely result in derision and ridicule.