Why are the Brutii and Scipii doing nothing?

[Veresov]

The Brutii and Scipii in my campaign are doing nothing. When I toggled the fow on, I noticed that at least for the Brutii, they were boarding and unboarding a ship multiple times (!).

Anyone else experience this? Any fix to this?

[Dutch_guy]

look at this thread :

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=55510

it covers your question, but there is no real answer or fix to it ..

[professorspatula]

Seems Sega's quality assurance peeps are as useless as Activision's. How can these issues escape playtesting - that is of course unless they don't care. Bah. Does this also explain why I've never seen the Saxons attempt to reach Britain in BI? Although the massive pirate fleets probably sink their ships to be fair.

[Jambo]

Yeah, this has also been disucussed and debated somewhat heatedly in more detail over at .com. The developers are aware and hopefully we'll see a fix sometime in the near future. In the meantime, saving and reloading on the same turn can help the Romans to expand. For Brutii, the crucial turn to do this on is turn 2 once they've loaded their ship. They should then transfer the troops and take Apollonia.

Certainly the rate at which the pirates spawn and dominate the sea usually means there are no ships of any faction mid-late game. Turning the pirate spawn rate down (i.e. by increasing the divisor number in the descr_strat file) would definitely help matters.

[Dutch_guy]

Seems Sega's quality assurance peeps are as useless as Activision's. How can these issues escape playtesting - that is of course unless they don't care. Bah. Does this also explain why I've never seen the Saxons attempt to reach Britain in BI? Although the massive pirate fleets probably sink their ships to be fair.

I have seen the saxons land in Britain, though it wasn't an impressive attacking force , and they left about 6 turns after they landed in Britain.

So at least if happens.

[Veresov]

I have seen the saxons land in Britain, though it wasn't an impressive attacking force , and they left about 6 turns after they landed in Britain.

So at least if happens.

There couldn't have been any quality testing on BI or the patch just released. Impossible not to notice it.

[gmjapan]

In my Numidia campaign the Scipii never stopped attacking Carthage. Three large armies in quick succession followed by dribs and drabs. Pity their timing sucked and Carthage beat every one of them back.

The Brutii were slow to start (like broken slow) but they eventually grabbed Apollonia and some of the BigMac lands. Just took them a really long time to start doing it...

On the other hand, the Julii were a rampant rabbit all over Gaul & Germania until Britainia handed them their a**.

[Uriel]

In my Numidia campaign the Scipii never stopped attacking Carthage. Three large armies in quick succession followed by dribs and drabs. Pity their timing sucked and Carthage beat every one of them.

Is it possible that the Scipii AI aren't broken in the way people thing but they are just getting a damn good thrashing from someone early on and taking decades to build up a stronger force? In my game the Scipii lost the early battle for Scyracruse. And it took time to build a larger army before trying again. Another possibility is that Carthage have usually taken a pasting early on in my games. Perhaps the devs have changed something to give them longer to build?

gmjapan - what year have you got to?

[gmjapan]

Well its 250BC now and I reckon the attacks started 8 - 10 turns ago so about 255BC for the initial attack on Carthage by the blue devil.

I took Carthage myself after their 3rd main army assaulted and failed (took advantage of the situation!) and Skippy still set an army every 2 or 3 turns to attack but they were usually only 3 units strong by then.

Now when I play Julii in 1.3 I find my roman armies are easier beaten in a fight and rout quicker than they ever did before... maybe thats just a feature of fights lasting longer though. I mean now that they are in the fights longer it makes a certain weakness more apparent, something that wasnt obvious in the 3 second fights the romans used to have... could be coincidence.

[Uriel]

I think one reason the Scipii are sitting doing nothing in my game (260ish just now) is they only have one ship and don't seem inclined to build any more. There's also a few pirate ships sitting just outside Sicily, which might be scaring them.

[HoreTore]

Well, I've never seen Brutii NOT take all of Greece in 1.3, and I've never seen the Scipii take anything other than Sicily....

Also, no faction seems to be taking any of the rebel islands, while the rebel settlements on land gets taken in a few turns. So I believe the answer is the rebel fleets dominating the sea.

I'll try modding down the spawn rate and see if anything happens then...

[Uriel]

Have been keeping an eye on the Scipii boats for a while now. With hindsight, I think they've been moving their navy on a combination of Greece, Carthage and the Rebels' turns.

I'm pretty convinced that they're just getting a damn good thrashing at sea and can't get anywhere as a result.

[Garvanko]

I think one reason the Scipii are sitting doing nothing in my game (260ish just now) is they only have one ship and don't seem inclined to build any more. There's also a few pirate ships sitting just outside Sicily, which might be scaring them.

Interesting point.

The Scipii are the main problem. Never leave Sicily at all. And Ive seen this in my Brutii, Pontic, Egyptian and current Parthian campaigns. Definite bug there. The Brutii and the Julii expand pretty quick after about 10-20 years.

[HoreTore]

I still think the pirates are the reason for this. However, reducing the priate_spawn_value to 1 didn't do anything.

I just played a parthian(the senate didn't work) campaign until year 230 doing nothing but pressing end turn, and the west coast of Italy was still riddled with Pirate ships constantly thrashing any Scipii fleets.

It doesn't seem like a bug, it's more of a balance issue... The Pirates are simply so strong that the Romans can't do anything with them about.

[HoreTore]

Oh, and thje scipii had 3 stacks around capua, so they're not attacking because they're lacking land forces...

[Uriel]

Anyone fancy sending a large fleet to babysit them to see if it helps?

[Red Harvest]

Well, I've never seen Brutii NOT take all of Greece in 1.3, and I've never seen the Scipii take anything other than Sicily....

Also, no faction seems to be taking any of the rebel islands, while the rebel settlements on land gets taken in a few turns. So I believe the answer is the rebel fleets dominating the sea.

I'll try modding down the spawn rate and see if anything happens then...

In my Carthage campaign both Brutii and Scipii did nothing after I defeated their initial forces in Sicily. They both built stacks in their own territories, but they quit even trying a naval invasion. Also the Julii did not attack Sardinia until very late, and then only with a very small force (so all I had to do was add a few units to the *original* garrison of 1 peasant, 1 town militia--or somesuch.)

The Brutii never even tried to expand into Greece. They focused on me, probably since my first action was to take the Scipii out of Sicily in turn #2. However, they never did much after trying and failing very early on. The Brutii did try to send a 2nd fleet with an invasion stack, but I managed to chase it off.

[GFX707]

Does this also explain why I've never seen the Saxons attempt to reach Britain in BI? Although

Actually in my current game as the Celts, they have put some troops ashore, only problem is, they've been standing beside Londinium for about 10 turns doing nothing.

I kind of wish they'd just stuck to the old style campaign map to save us from the PATHETIC strategic AI.

[Sleepy]

I still think the pirates are the reason for this. However, reducing the priate_spawn_value to 1 didn't do anything.

That increase the chance of pirates appearing. You need to make the value much larger to reduce the chance of them spawning, say 100?

[Balbus]

No, the pirates aren't the problem.

I removed the pirates altogether and the Scipii are still broken. They simply won't go for Africa. Once in a blue moon, they might try for Greece instead, but never Carthage. This is really annoying for those of us who like playing as Romans, especially as the patch has also brought the alliance breaking problem and the Greek senators.

My own theory is that programming the campaign map AI is probably very delicate work. If CA try and change one thing, they end up breaking something else. I think with this patch they thought they'd tinker with the Romans slightly but ended up screwing them up.

[gardibolt]

I still think the pirates are the reason for this. However, reducing the priate_spawn_value to 1 didn't do anything.

I thought this number was a divisor, so you may need to modify this value upwards. Try that and see if it helps.

[GFX707]

Bleh, the campaign in RTW is a joke.

[professorspatula]

I have seen the saxons land in Britain, though it wasn't an impressive attacking force , and they left about 6 turns after they landed in Britain.

So at least if happens.

Crivvens, I've seen the Saxons land in Britain too now. Only about 4 units mind, but an impressive 19 unit army was also being sent via ship. For a moment my Romano-British borders looked in danger, until the unbeatable rebel fleets sunk the Saxon troopships just a few yards from land. Again. Anyone recommend a good number to alter the pirate respawn rate to, bearing in mind some pirates should still be around, just not silly amounts? Actually, toggling fog of war on and off occasionally, I note it's mainly just in the North Sea where the pirates are around in large numbers.

[Trithemius]

Crivvens, I've seen the Saxons land in Britain too now. Only about 4 units mind, but an impressive 19 unit army was also being sent via ship. For a moment my Romano-British borders looked in danger, until the unbeatable rebel fleets sunk the Saxon troopships just a few yards from land. Again. Anyone recommend a good number to alter the pirate respawn rate to, bearing in mind some pirates should still be around, just not silly amounts? Actually, toggling fog of war on and off occasionally, I note it's mainly just in the North Sea where the pirates are around in large numbers.

Those North and Baltic Sea pirates seem especially bad since the player and AI controlled fleets in those areas start out small or nonexistent. Toning them down seems like an exceptionally good idea.

[Jambo]

I like and use a pirate rating of "100". :)

[Trithemius]

I like and use a pirate rating of "100". :)

How does that compare to the standard rating?

*has no idea what the standard value is*

[Divine Wind]

The Brutii and Scipii in my campaign are doing nothing. When I toggled the fow on, I noticed that at least for the Brutii, they were boarding and unboarding a ship multiple times (!).

Anyone else experience this? Any fix to this?

Thats interesting. Ive just started a new campaign with the selucids with vanilla RTW 1.3, and ive got to about 240 BC and the romans have practically taken over most of western and central europe. The Julii have all of Gaul and Spain, Scipii owns all of northern africa and is now advancing on egypt, and the Brutii have taken greece and just wiped out dacia.

Crazy stuff.