Make BI campaign a bit tougher

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

A few changes would make BU campaign a whole lot tougher, and hopefully more enjoyable.

There are two features that are making city management way too easy, and that boost strategic rusher:

1/ make exterminate less rewarding. When I exterminate, I end up with cash to pay for more armies, and I solve unrest problem. What's not to love? I got a whole economy rolling on loot money and nothing else, getting the best units for each faction, swimming in gold. The more I attack, the more I loot, the more I get armies, the more I attack.
The looting circle is way to rewarding.

2/ make destroying building less appealing... Makes it (near-)impossible to destroy same culture buillding, and giving temporary unrest penalty to destroy other culture building.
Destroying building is another part of the loot circle.
It's sad to see that optimal strategy for WRE is destroy lot of buildings, get cities to revolt, and exterminate/ loot for cash.
I wrote "near" -impossible holds for the religious building: to make it possible to change religion, its always possible to destroy religious building.

Louis,

[Kekvit Irae]

1) Exterminating is a double-edged sword. You lower the population, which prevents you from building up your better buildings in that city for a long time. If you exterminate a town with a population of 1900, it will drop back to around 400, requiring about 20+ turns to get back to 1900. Whereas if you just occupied it, you will be able to build the next level tier in a turn or two, allowing quicker access to retraining troops.

[lilljonas]

...which is seldom a problem, since you exterminate towns with large populations. A town with a large population and a big replenishing percentage will recover from an extermination quite quickly, giving you the opportunity to do it all over. If you don't count the small <2000 pop towns, extermination is pretty much a no-brainer, making the "kill more of your own subjects than enemies"-strategy far too appealing. I know few actual empires who's economies revolved around exterminating their capital every 15 year....

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

1) Exterminating is a double-edged sword. You lower the population, which prevents you from building up your better buildings in that city for a long time. If you exterminate a town with a population of 1900, it will drop back to around 400, requiring about 20+ turns to get back to 1900. Whereas if you just occupied it, you will be able to build the next level tier in a turn or two, allowing quicker access to retraining troops.

That penalty is far too small when compared to the reward. And in BI, overpopulation and unrest are more of a problem than development.

It's not unusual to get loot in 15 000/20 000 for an average Roman city. When rushing, I'd rather have 15 000/20 000, than another overpopulated city.
That population reduction is actually another good thing that promotes looting/ extermination: less population = less unrest= less garnison= more troops to loot the next city.

At 1900 pop, unrest and sanitation are not a big deal, so I might leave those alone. Although... really, I shall loot/exterminate them: why shall I care about that 1900 city? All that is needed is a core of fully developed cities building elite troops all the time. Once you get those 3-4 fully developed cities to make your armies, everything else can be a field of ruins... It's actually easier if it is a field of ruins. and it gives you more money to keep the looting circle rolling!

Louis,

[dismal]

I think "exterminating" enhances the game's barbarian flavor. I would actually like to have a "sack" option in non-horde mode. Perhaps adding some penalties (e.g., negative traits, loss of influence) for non-barbarians to exterminate would be consistent.

The change that is often suggested to make it harder is not allowing the use of military buildings outside your culture. This has always been a big advantage, but is even more of one in BI where so many cities are already heavily upgraded. I can go from homeless to pumping out elite hunnic warriors in no time.

The big game imbalancer, in my opinion, is the ability to starve people out in sieges. Once I put a siege on, all of the enemy's options are bad. If he sallies out I crush him as he comes out the gate, if he does nothing his troops erode and eventually he loses the city, if he tries to relieve the siege with other armies I get the defense advantage. Plus, I probably have a few of his other cities under siege at the same time.

*edit

The reason this is a big imbalancer is because the enemy does not get the same advantage when it sieges me. I can whoop the AI when I sally out.

[Louis de la Ferte Ste Colombe]

I think "exterminating" enhances the game's barbarian flavor. I would actually like to have a "sack" option in non-horde mode. Perhaps adding some penalties (e.g., negative traits, loss of influence) for non-barbarians to exterminate would be consistent.

I am all for barbarian sacking and exterminating cities.

But it really makes WAY too much money. To the point it spoils the game.

Edit: 1/3 of the current money would probably be better. Of course, that does mean sacaling back slavery option too

Louis,

[TinCow]

If you think extermination is too unbalancing.... don't do it.

[Dorkus]

Tincow, with all respect, that is a silly answer. Games are supposed to be reasonably balanced. If there is some feature/unit that is making them imbalanced, it is the obligation of the developer to change that. We could of course make all games balanced by all committing to using only peasants, modding the game so that all provinces were identical economically, committing to never attacking, and to changing the victory conditions from "conquer the world" to "sit and build as many peasants as possible." but then the game would hardly be a game. It would be a chore.

Features are in the game for gameplay reasons. If those gameplay reasons are undermined by balance issues, then that is a problem.

As to the substantive issue, i agree (and had actually never thought about the game's balance problems in this light!). Extermination is far too valuable and easy. You get on a virtous cycle very quickly whereby you never run out of cash, and can endlessly build the most expensive troops and buildlings. It would be nice if they reduced the value of extermination (1/4 denari per pop?) and/or imposed SEVERE order penalities for doing so.

[dismal]

I am all for barbarian sacking and exterminating cities.

But it really makes WAY too much money. To the point it spoils the game.

Edit: 1/3 of the current money would probably be better. Of course, that does mean sacaling back slavery option too

Louis,

More challening siege fights on the battle map would offset this too. Losing men and potentially losing battles would cost you money, and have the additional advantage of being fun.

I don't exterminate for the money so much as for the order anyway. There usually comes a point in the game where I really don't need money that much anymore. I'm not sure you even get enough money to offset the lost income you'd get from having the higher population. Exteminating's primary benefit is I can take my army on to the next city instead of worrying about pacifying the locals.

[TinCow]

Tincow, with all respect, that is a silly answer. Games are supposed to be reasonably balanced. If there is some feature/unit that is making them imbalanced, it is the obligation of the developer to change that. We could of course make all games balanced by all committing to using only peasants, modding the game so that all provinces were identical economically, committing to never attacking, and to changing the victory conditions from "conquer the world" to "sit and build as many peasants as possible." but then the game would hardly be a game. It would be a chore.

Perhaps, but extermination is far from the problem. The problem is how squalor works and how the cities grow. If a reduction in population really WAS a penalty, then extermination would be perfect the way it is. If you want to complain about something, complain about the real issue, not the side one.

If that's a silly answer, it's also a ridiculous thing to complain about unbalanced extermination and yet to continue doing it. It doesn't take a whole lot of effort to click one of the other choices.

[SigniferOne]

I don't know whether there's any way now to modify the effects of Exterminate, but I do know a way to solve your problem:

The extermination bringing in a lot of money is historical and not a problem. What IS a problem? Too quick of a resurgence in population. That's where you can really affect it -- for the cities that have too much pop growth, simply lower their farm values or make buildings have less of pop growth increase. That way you can exterminate a city, sure, and pocket a nice sum, but you'll leave the city useless.

[dismal]

If that's a silly answer, it's also a ridiculous thing to complain about unbalanced extermination and yet to continue doing it. It doesn't take a whole lot of effort to click one of the other choices.

This is equivalent to saying I shouldn't complain about the bad siege AI because I can offset it by making intentional tactical blunders myself.

I generally want to make the game unbalanced in my favor (aka "winning"), I just want to feel like it's because of my strategic genius not a loophole.

[Garvanko]

Those Hordes won't think twice about exterminating any of your cities. Its an easy and necessary way of making cash. Nothing wrong with that..

[Slyspy]

This is equivalent to saying I shouldn't complain about the bad siege AI because I can offset it by making intentional tactical blunders myself.

I generally want to make the game unbalanced in my favor (aka "winning"), I just want to feel like it's because of my strategic genius not a loophole.

Quite right. RTW is essentially broken - there is no challenge at all. I hear that there have been some improvements in BI but the fact reamins that the AI cannot play it's own game and that the underlying economic model is badly flawed.

[dismal]

Quite right. RTW is essentially broken - there is no challenge at all. I hear that there have been some improvements in BI but the fact reamins that the AI cannot play it's own game and that the underlying economic model is badly flawed.

I wouldn't say "broken". I think it's a very good game that spoils you for many others on the market.

It just hasn't lived up to its full potential yet. I think the graphic eye candy got a step ahead of the AI in this round, and hopefully the developers are working hard to catch it back up.

The inability of the AI to hold its own in battles cascades thru the rest of the game. When losing is a remote possibility, there's not much need for complex strategic decision making. Build stack, besiege city, repeat until victory.

[Taiwan Legion]

i think the biggest exploit of BI is that peasants are dirt cheap. The benefit of higher tax rate you get from them is way more.

[HarunTaiwan]

They should have a chance for armies that do not move enough to get a sickness or plague. This happened a lot.

If you are in a fort, then no, but during sieges armies often go dysenterry, etc.

[econ21]

Tincow, with all respect, that is a silly answer. Games are supposed to be reasonably balanced. If there is some feature/unit that is making them imbalanced, it is the obligation of the developer to change that.

Well, if this were a forum for CA designers, I would agree with you. But as a forum for gamers, I think TinCow's suggestion of not exterminating has merit. I was on a roll the other day with the ERE marching into Italy, then one of my generals - Honorarius the Kind - captured a massive WRE town. There was no way I could justify a guy with that moniker massacring his fellow Romans, but now his army has to babysit the town and it has stalled my offensive.

Not exterminating makes the game more challenging and fun for the player (does the AI ever massacre, BTW? I've never noticed it doing so). It also makes it more historical, IMO.

I think playing with some rules of thumb - no exterminating, balanced armies, no peasant garrisons etc - is necessary for a decent challenge with the more powerful factions. Playing RTR with and without such rules was like night and day for me - without them was a yawn, like vanilla RTW; with them, it was great fun and felt historical. Not at all equivalent to trying to just win with just peasants, which I agree would be pointless.

[Kraxis]

(does the AI ever massacre, BTW? I've never noticed it doing so).

It most certainly does.
When the Saxons ruthlessly stabbed me in the back and took my Burgundian capital I got the message that they had exterminated the population.
Later when I had taken Constantinople as the Huns (first city, foolish me) the ERE surprised me and took it back, I got another message of that kind.

If the AI is running low on money it will exterminate, just like hordes will sack a whole lot initially.

[CountMRVHS]

Exactly. There's a lot to be said for using a little imagination and some self-imposed restraints in ANY TW game.

Look, play the way you want, but I get sick of people complaining the game is too easy to the point of unplayability when they do silly things like early rushing, all peasant garrisons, or the repeated exterminate/retake settlment cycle. There's *nothing wrong* with doing those things, but if you find your game is getting a little boring, maybe, just MAYBE it's time to reconsider how you play. After all, when I play BI (or RTW or MTW or VI) I'm not thinking of the best & quickest way to get the game over with, and how I can use the in-game mechanics to get me there. I'm thinking -- ok, this is my situation. I'm in control of this realm. What would I do if this *wasn't* a game?

About game balance: Obviously BI is tremendously UNbalanced at the beginning. Try playing the WRE versus the Huns, for example. This is exactly as it should be. Much of RTW was a little *too* balanced for me, so I'm very happy with the general state of things in BI.

In my first Huns campaign, H/H, I must have exterminated every settlement out of necessity. I would take over a town, see the obligatory red face, and exterminate. This sent me into an income-sucking spiral exactly as Kekvit described above. Although I'd have a ton of money from that extermination, it wouldn't last very long. After several turns I'd be in the hole again and need to scrap together another army, which would exterminate the NEXT town.... you see how it goes. Although it seemed necessary at the time, exterminating those towns was absolutely crippling me in the long run.

Same thing in my current WRE H/H campaign. Everything's going to hell, of course, but I finally managed to get an army together and take the Alemanni capital. Of course I exterminated that sucker, which gave me 11,000 denarii. That put me up to 5,000 in my bank account, so it was absolutely necessary -- but I'll go through that money in no time. With the population from that town so low, I'll still need to do some more stripping of my military to stay afloat (of course this is maybe the 3rd time I've seen a positive cash balance since the first turn).

Anyway. A long rambling, but I guess my point is, extermination IS 2-sided; and if you find the game too easy, try to change the way you play. Yes, it would be nice if CA had tailored the game to our every individual whim, but alas ours is an imperfect world. RTW:BI - some imagination required.

CountMRVHS

[Dorkus]

Well, if this were a forum for CA designers, I would agree with you. But as a forum for gamers, I think TinCow's suggestion of not exterminating has merit.

There are two possible interpretations of Tincow's original "suggestion":

1. It is possible to not exterminate.
2. It is possible to not exterminate, so shut up and be happy about the game the way it is.

1 is self-evident and trivial -- about as informative and interesting as saying "RTW is a computer game."

The natural interpretation, then, is 2 -- which I described as "silly." I have been given this "suggestion" so many times that, if I were to have actually followed the advice, I would be playing a peasant-only army. [Among the features that people have "suggested" that I not use: cavalry (because the AI does not respond well tactically to cav), generals (because they gain stars too fast), enslavement (because, in vanilla rtw, you could build up an imp palace in 10 turns because slaves were only sent to provinces with governors), bodyguard regeneration (Self-evident), ap units (because the toughest units generally have higher armor/shield relative to defense), etc etc etc.]

More importantly, you are correct that this is a gamers forum. And part of being in a gamers forum is realizing that some people like to play the game with ALL of its intended features, so that ALL of the options are available. If you are not one of those types, then fine -- don't complain about imbalancing or bugged features. But if you cannot understand that others DO like to fully utilize the games features, then you are being, at best, narrow-minded and silly. At worst, quite rude. The OP is pointing out some aspect of the game that he finds out of sync with the other aspects of the game; not only is his intent quite valid, imo, but there are many others who are interested in hearing his argument.

The OP did not demand that anyone play with the exterminate feature. He was pointing out (in a quite reasonable and respectful fashion, I might add) a possibly bugged/imbalanced feature for discussion/debate. If you have a point about how exterminate is not in fact imbalanced, then I think that is a useful contribution. If you just want to dog the OP and impose your own vision of "proper game-playing", then I think that is not a useful contribution. That was my point.

[Dorkus]

Anyway. A long rambling, but I guess my point is, extermination IS 2-sided; and if you find the game too easy, try to change the way you play. Yes, it would be nice if CA had tailored the game to our every individual whim, but alas ours is an imperfect world. RTW:BI - some imagination required.
CountMRVHS

Please read my post.

But for what it's worth, I don't see how purposefully not using bugged/imbalanced features is "imaginative." I doubt the OP was so stupid and wooden that he failed to realize it was possible not to press the exterminate button.

[TinCow]

There are two possible interpretations of Tincow's original "suggestion":

1. It is possible to not exterminate.
2. It is possible to not exterminate, so shut up and be happy about the game the way it is.

1 is self-evident and trivial -- about as informative and interesting as saying "RTW is a computer game."

The natural interpretation, then, is 2 -- which I described as "silly."

...But if you cannot understand that others DO like to fully utilize the games features, then you are being, at best, narrow-minded and silly. At worst, quite rude.

Whoa, whoa, whoa. I would like to remind you of what my statement was.

If you think extermination is too unbalancing.... don't do it.

Please explain how that is remotely rude. You're reading a hell of a lot into a rather simple statement.

[Dorkus]

Let me show you, by way of analogy:

If you don't like my comments... don't read them.

[TinCow]

*sigh*

Let me make this clear. It was not my intention to offend anyone. I have lurked and posted on these forums for a long while now and I have seen MANY threads regarding both MTW and RTW that suggest various things that players can do themselves to improve the difficulty of the games. Some of them may have certainly been simple solutions, but ones that I had not thought of before. Perhaps I was simply ignorant for not realizing instantly that I could do things differently on my own in order to create a more enjoyable game. Regardless, I found several of these suggestion to be very useful and my comment was made intenting to provide similar advice to someone who seemed troubled. I was only trying to help.

[econ21]

Peace, friends! I think we are arguing about nothing.

I've just finished my go in a ERE PBM. I exterminated often, as I was racing a little. And I did not disband the huge peasant garrisons TinCow bequeathed me and even added a few more. But I was surprised by how easy it was to control captured huge WRE towns if I did not exterminate. It was all a matter of getting a good governor. I guess it's the absence of a culture penalty and maybe the Romans have a lot of happiness buildings.

I'm not sure what I am going to do next in BI, as the two Roman campaigns seem rather quick if you know what to do but I do like the concept of playing Romans against the hordes. I may try WRE again with more restraints. I wonder what is like without doing all the things in turns 1-3 that the guides tell you to do?

[mystic brew]

simon,

can i set you a challenge as the WRE, then?


in retrospect, i wish i had saved the situation, because it's been the most fun RTW game i have ever had...

I call it the Western pagans.

Essentially, i engineered a collapse of the WRE, but in a structured way, making it a pagan v Christian shootout. First turn i basically made sure every religious building south of Avaricum was christian, moved all the christian characters down towards teh south, and all the pagans towards the north, gathering at Samarobriva.

set taxes to very high, and in short order all i had was the saxon shore and Britain.

take it from there....

[Dorkus]

this wasn't perfectly clear from my post, but I actually meant to "show" my point as a purely hypothetical.

I think people should read things ESPECIALLY when they don't like what's being said. :)

In any event, Simon is probably right. So let me apologize for any disproportionate reaction; directing frustration over a general attitude toward a single poster was never *my* intent.

[CountMRVHS]

Dorkus -- all I meant was that you can make the game a bit more fun for yourself by imposing a few historical-ish or realistic restrictions. I thought it was pretty clear: for example, I COULD use all-peasant garrisons because I know the computer only cares about the number of soldiers in a town, not the quality. But I choose to *limit* the number of peasants in my town, because otherwise it would be too easy. I like to think of it as keeping a realistic, capable presence in my town as a garrison. That's "imagination", because if all I cared about was winning the game I would have virtually no incentive to keep expensive, good-quality garrisons in some of my towns.

Likewise, if you find extermination gives you too much money, perhaps you can limit it to towns belonging to a certain faction, or as payback for a particularly hard-fought siege.

Look, at any rate we're talking about a game here. Every now and then any of us can get sort of pissy here, just by the nature of the medium; but none of us can get away from the fact that, as long as we're talking about a game, we're having pretty inane conversations (relatively) and it's nothing to get upset about. I also apologize for any rudeness and look forward to discussing game mechanics or your latest campaign or anything else in the future.

CountMRVHS

-Edited for pissyness!-

[Horatius]

...which is seldom a problem, since you exterminate towns with large populations. A town with a large population and a big replenishing percentage will recover from an extermination quite quickly, giving you the opportunity to do it all over. If you don't count the small <2000 pop towns, extermination is pretty much a no-brainer, making the "kill more of your own subjects than enemies"-strategy far too appealing. I know few actual empires who's economies revolved around exterminating their capital every 15 year....

What do you call Caligula and Nero, and Commodus?

During the Republic period how about Cornelius Sulla, and not to mention the way Cicero died at the hands of being proscribed.

So yes proscription was indeed something that was done for money.

I play the game for fun more then for challenge, so I think you can endure pretending to be Cornelius Sulla.