My Early Thoughts For The EB Beta.

[DocHolliday2006]

First off, I'm coming from a background playing the total realism mod since its introduction, so I have a bit of experience with "realistic" mods for RTW. Some elements of this mod I find to be superior, while others I find a bit lacking.

Pros:

1) I like the idea of heavy reliance on basic citizen hoplites for the Greek alliance. For small cities, this especially makes a lot of sense. However, as I will go on to discuss, I'm not sure that not giving major cities more advanced hoplites to begin with is a good idea.

2) The models I have seen so far are all excellent. The Macedonian Companion cavalry is especially striking. Small cosmetic changes like the icon for ships changing to an entire fleet and the siege camps/blockades are also great.

3) The new diplomatic decisions are fantastic. The option to choose between a quick and easy dictatorship or a more drawn out but vital fully integrated government adds new depth to the game.

4) The descriptions for factions and units are all top notch, and they really show the research that's gone into the mod. The historically based advisers are also interesting.

5) The choice to separate buildings that allow for sea commerce and offensive naval units is a good one.

6) Load screen pictures are great.

Cons:

1) I'm not sure that it really makes sense to be able to build certain types of troops in all provinces. Building Iberian units in North Africa just doesn't make much sense. In a real life scenario, those units would have been raised (or hired in the case of mercenaries) in Iberia, and only then sent to their final destinations. I don't have an issue with allowing certain "generic" stile units being built in any integrated province however. The Romans had a history of integrating provinces, and especially towards the later empire, drafting provincial troops into their standardized armies. Even when the Romans were hiring German cavalry though, they could never train German cavalry in Italy.

2)Why can you walk from Asia Minor to Europe? It really doesn't make any sense and kind of works against the great naval system that you've built. I'm guessing there are other land connections, which I would be equally opposed to.

3) I'm not sure why the Britons are playable. They make more sense as a rebel faction. The Britons really didn't appear on the world stage until the Romans invaded, and before then they were largely absorbed in internal matter and conflicts, only trading a bit with Gaul, Germany, and the Carthaginians, and I think perhaps a few times sending troops to aid an ally in Gaul.

4) The economics may be a bit off, but I haven't played enough to say for sure. As Epirus for instance, I had my starting provinces the city above the capital, and Pella, each fully taxed and with one garrison unit, except for Pella which had my main army with 8 units. I had trade rights with the Romans, Dacians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Pontus(ians?), Armenians, and Egyptians. Despite this, I was losing money every turn. I simply could not turn my finances around. We know from history that Epirus was able to field a much larger army. Again, I'm not sure on this one yet, as I haven't spent enough time with it.

5) For some reason, my cavalry seems to randomly keep breaking off pursuit of broken enemy units. Even after I give them the order again, they sometimes will simply stop the pursuit after killing a few of the enemy.

6) Load time, both at start up and between turns, is much longer than vanilla and RTW. In game lag is not a problem however.

Suggestion:

1) Syracuse would make a fantastic faction to play as in the mod. Syracuse had a long history in the ancient world, defying Athens, Carthage, and even Rome before finally falling. They sailed all the way to Africa to confront Carthage on their own soil, and if you're familiar with the history, they had quite a changing web of alliances going. Being on the island of Sicily would give them a unique play experience, despite being basically Greek in unit and building types. I think you've reached the max number of factions, but you might consider the exclusion of the Britons which really didn't take a huge part history, as I explained above.

In conclusion, I'm really enjoying the mod. I love what you've done with it so far, and I hope you'll take some of my comments into consideration when making future changes.

Thanks, and good luck.

[Han]

obviously you haven't read the preview of the open beta for Casse, it tells you why they have potential to take over the British Isles, but I think Ranika will be able to give you lots of reasons why on this topic...

[DocHolliday2006]

obviously you haven't read the preview of the open beta for Casse, it tells you why they have potential to take over the British Isles, but I think Ranika will be able to give you lots of reasons why on this topic...

I don't dispute that they can take it over. I only say that the British isles have a limited impact on history until the Roman invasion, thus making it seem like the slot could perhaps be better used on a group that had a major influence on historical outcomes. Some see the Numidian defection to Rome as the reason Scipio was able to win at Zamma for instance. Their horsemen had quite an impact on Roman warfare at the time, and they would rise to replace Carthage as the regional power in the area, eventually plaguing the Romans once more before Marius went in to deal with them. Syracuse, my suggestion, warred with the Greeks, Romans, Carthaginians, and native Sicilians for years, even going so far as to invade Carthaginian held North Africa. You might say that Syracuse was the primary reason that the Athenian empire fell apart, changing the course of history, though that is very debatable. I'm sure that other factions have similar qualifications. I don't say that the Britons are not interesting, they are, and I love the culture, however I think perhaps that given limited slots, their's could be better used.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Just on the water crossings part: The AI isn't smart enough to hop across short gaps of water, so we help them out. Otherwise they hardly ever take an army across a short gap and they would (apparently) need a huge fleet to get units across some narrow bodies of water - and since we have bridges over the nile according to RTW vanilla, then why not have something similar over short bodies of water? Anyway, those bridges are just abstractions for ferries, so we are using abstractions too with water crossings. We did our homework. Only certain places have them - where there were historically easy crossings. No crossing at Gibraltar or Kalais for example.

I guess I should say (on that issue) that it's way past changing. I don't think a single eb member objected to it and it's one of the few things that we are all quite happy with the way it turned out.

[Dayve]

RTR has land bridges... They're a good idea as like Teleklos said the AI can't manage to get over tiny strips of water or large ones for that matter... And they are at places with tiny strips of water that soldiers could have got across easily without the help of a 'navy'...

Sure Briton didn't do anything interesting until the Romans invaded but, what about some other factions on the map? During the mods time frame what did Dacia do except for getting conquered by the Romans? Greeks? What did they do? Seleucids, did they do anything apart from get conquered? All syracuse did was get conquered in the mods time frame... Or did the thing with Carthage happen after 272BC? I think if the Britons had been united under one ruler somehow they could have taken all of Britain and perhaps even raided/taken parts of Gaul... Having the Casse isn't unrealistic at all i don't think.

[DocHolliday2006]

Sure Briton didn't do anything interesting until the Romans invaded but, what about some other factions on the map? During the mods time frame what did Dacia do except for getting conquered by the Romans? Greeks? What did they do? Seleucids, did they do anything apart from get conquered? All syracuse did was get conquered in the mods time frame... Or did the thing with Carthage happen after 272BC? I think if the Britons had been united under one ruler somehow they could have taken all of Britain and perhaps even raided/taken parts of Gaul... Having the Casse isn't unrealistic at all i don't think.

The Dacians conquered much of the Balkans, creating a fairly large empire noted for its arts and the reputation of their warriors. The Greeks, even after their low during Phillip's and Alexander's domination, managed to recover, and several leagues defied post Alexandrian Macedonia. Their economies flourished and their military became respectable. Sparta especially, with funding from the Ptolemaic dynasty, managed quite an impressive rebirth, and they militarily reexerted themselves enough to shock the outside world. The Seleucid Empire was possibly the most active of the successor kingdoms. They also had the most diverse territories. They were constantly dealing with rebellions and conflicts with other states, especially Ptolemaic Egyptian kingdom. Until Rome took defeated them in successive wars, they were probably tied with Rome, Ptolemaic Egypt, and Carthage in terms of sheer clout, both militarily and politically.

Perhaps what you suggest is possible, but it didn't happen, and I think that's reason enough to give their slot to a more active civilization. I don't mean to be come off as high handed about this, and I have no real desire to argue. It's just my opinion, and you're just as entitled to yours.

[Ulfang]

I'm really quite enjoying the mod. The only other major mod i've played is RTR which I love. This is an interesting distraction. I decided to be boring and play Rome seeing as it was the faction I knew best so thought it would be the perfect faction for me to play in order to notice any differences. Well its different alright :) I don't think i've stuggled so much in any of the games i've played. I'm in the 250's BC at the mo and normally i'm at least in Sicily by now but can't clamp down on the rebels or Carthage who keep popping across form sicily to annoy me. I guess the main reason is the cost of facilities and troops and having such a low income. One of my northern town was bribed and my empire nearly went bankrupt :) I dream of being able to afford to buy a single unit of Mercenaries!

On the whole i'm enjoying it as i'm limited to one main army as i just can't afford the troops other than garrisons. I haven't noticed any bugs as yet or had any CTD's.

As for the argument regarding the Britons I have to agree with Dayve. I do see where you're coming from but there are quite a few civilizations in the game that didn't do much other than keep to their own historically or get conquered. Besides Greece and Macedonia's great history they did little other than get conquered by Rome in this time period along with most other Civs. Of course you're entitled to your own opinion.

[khelvan]

1) I like the idea of heavy reliance on basic citizen hoplites for the Greek alliance. For small cities, this especially makes a lot of sense. However, as I will go on to discuss, I'm not sure that not giving major cities more advanced hoplites to begin with is a good idea.

If the advanced cities cannot build more advanced units, it is an issue with the recruitment system through error, not design.

1) I'm not sure that it really makes sense to be able to build certain types of troops in all provinces. Building Iberian units in North Africa just doesn't make much sense. In a real life scenario, those units would have been raised (or hired in the case of mercenaries) in Iberia, and only then sent to their final destinations. I don't have an issue with allowing certain "generic" stile units being built in any integrated province however. The Romans had a history of integrating provinces, and especially towards the later empire, drafting provincial troops into their standardized armies. Even when the Romans were hiring German cavalry though, they could never train German cavalry in Italy.

Well, for some levy units we consider this simply a matter of handing the natives a few javelins, for instance, and organizing them into a unit. This happened in many places, and examples abound.

Romans aren't the best example, as they did raise legions from foreign provinces. Additionally, people from throughout the empire would travel to Rome to find employment in the army. This is one of the "special" things we will probably reflect at some point for the Romans.

However, while Iberia may be able to train a basic levy unit throughout the world, Carthage should not be building Iberian units everywhere; this is an error.

Conquering a province and instilling a government may imply some form of colonization. For many factions it does. We intend for our government system to gain complexity; for some government types to show assimilation, others to show colonization, others to show cooperation with the natives. These imply different unit recruitment choices, one of which will be the ability to build some "faction" units outside of the faction home lands. Others to be able to build "native" units through utilizing native allies. I will be making a very long, involved post about our government and unit recruitment system in the future, asking for help in shaping our systems and understanding if we are missing something RTW has to offer us in this effort.

2)Why can you walk from Asia Minor to Europe? It really doesn't make any sense and kind of works against the great naval system that you've built. I'm guessing there are other land connections, which I would be equally opposed to.

These "land bridges" are not meant to actually show a land connection, but rather represent bodies of water that historically were crossed without major fleet efforts. Some of these are close enough for you to actually see, and some you could swim. It implies small fleets of rafts or barges which could be (and often were) assembled at the crossing point and discarded after the crossing.

They show areas that were historically easy to cross and were not the focus of major naval engagements due to their proximity. The best way to show this, in our opinion, is the ability for both land and sea units to cross. The crossings are still blocked by naval vessles if they are near, so this perfectly represents what we were trying to achieve, as well as improving gameplay in those areas by encouraging the AI to make those crossings military objectives, as they were in history.

3) I'm not sure why the Britons are playable.

I have answered this time and time again. For the sake of brevity, I will merely say that we view the map as a whole, and faction interaction as impact over all of the cultures, not through their interaction with only one or two (see Roman or Greek) cultures. This particular faction had an impact throughout the known world through trade, as well as very strong military impact in their own area of the world. Just because they did not invade the mainland does not mean they did not meet our criteria for being expansionistic, for one. Which they did. They held an empire about as large as Dacia in her heyday, and had a similar cultural effect (trading with Carthage, for instance, and others). And a similar military effect in the British Isles; one could say even more successful based on how the wars in Dacia and Britain versus the Romans eventually played out.

We cannot show a growing, expansionistic faction as rebels; the Casse being a case in point, though other worthy factions come to mind.

4) The economics may be a bit off, but I haven't played enough to say for sure. As Epirus for instance, I had my starting provinces the city above the capital, and Pella, each fully taxed and with one garrison unit, except for Pella which had my main army with 8 units. I had trade rights with the Romans, Dacians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Pontus(ians?), Armenians, and Egyptians. Despite this, I was losing money every turn. I simply could not turn my finances around. We know from history that Epirus was able to field a much larger army. Again, I'm not sure on this one yet, as I haven't spent enough time with it.

This is a design decision. We have made it explicitly difficult for a standing army to exist. You use it, or you lose it. It is more difficult in the beginning, yes, but that is a benefit, in our eyes; players are actually challenged by this.

Based on the number of positive posts and messages we've received on this, it only reinforces that we made the right decision. Some may not like it, but it is something we'll only make "worse" in the eyes of those who don't like this monetary challenge, as it makes the game more fun for the majority of the public, as well as our team members.

5) For some reason, my cavalry seems to randomly keep breaking off pursuit of broken enemy units. Even after I give them the order again, they sometimes will simply stop the pursuit after killing a few of the enemy.

We can't directly influence the battle AI, as much as we would like to.

6) Load time, both at start up and between turns, is much longer than vanilla and RTW. In game lag is not a problem however.

Yes, this is something we are looking into. We have had some success so far toward making this better for the first patch.

Thank you for your comments.

[DocHolliday2006]

If the advanced cities cannot build more advanced units, it is an issue with the recruitment system through error, not design.

In that case, I would suggest that Athens and Sparta need to have more advanced units available. Sparta especially, as it states that their units are now serving as mercenaries in the faction text, so it would only make sense that they could produce Spartan warriors.

I have answered this time and time again. For the sake of brevity, I will merely say that we view the map as a whole, and faction interaction as impact over all of the cultures, not through their interaction with only one or two (see Roman or Greek) cultures. This particular faction had an impact throughout the known world through trade, as well as very strong military impact in their own area of the world. Just because they did not invade the mainland does not mean they did not meet our criteria for being expansionistic, for one. Which they did. They held an empire about as large as Dacia in her heyday, and had a similar cultural effect (trading with Carthage, for instance, and others). And a similar military effect in the British Isles; one could say even more successful based on how the wars in Dacia and Britain versus the Romans eventually played out.

Sounds fine. Just my opinion.

This is a design decision. We have made it explicitly difficult for a standing army to exist. You use it, or you lose it. It is more difficult in the beginning, yes, but that is a benefit, in our eyes; players are actually challenged by this.

If this is indeed the intention then I would like to compliment your decision. A very interesting aspect to be thinking about. It makes perfect sense too, as I was just reading about how Athens was having problems keeping their army in the field during the Pelopenesian War