Comment on the Campaign Map

[oudysseos]

I love EB already, but I have to say that I miss certain elements of the RTR campaign map. I know that there is a limit to the number of cities that one may have, but in RTR (especially with the realistic map mod) the cities were denser around greece/italy/ionia/the black sea. I understand that the EB team has their reasons for trying to spread the action out a little, but the realism has suffered just a tiny bit. I just wondered- if the Yuezhi are going, why replace them at all? Do we have to have 20 factions? How 'bout some of the old cities back- Maronia, Thessalonika, another city on Cyprus, Utica? It made conquering those regions slower since you had to work your way through more cities, and of course more rewarding once you had done so. Just a comment.

[Djurre]

The thing is, with all those cities, you are allways fighting siege battles. Ceck the rome total realism (@ .org, not .com!). that mod has a very dense greece and italy. its a pain in the ***

[oudysseos]

Yeah I have played lots of RTR- I don't understand why everybody hates the sieges so much. The density of settlement is more historically accurate and if you hate fighting a siege battle then just build up a couple of huge stacks and autoresolve, or wait it out until the AI has to sally. The actual number of largescale set-piece battles in history is quite small, so why should the game be different? Advancing through Greece and Italy being a pain in the arse is kind of the point I'm trying to make, eh? It should be a pain.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

We can't go back on this one oudysseos. We've got our factions spread out and want to be able to focus on other areas of the map just as much as on Greece or Italy. It's just going to have to remain one of the biggest differences between RTR and EB probably - and both choices can be justified. But if we went back now and started squeezing more of our cities into those areas, we'd have to do things like removing numidian provinces or the kingdoms in southern arabia or seleukid provinces in southwest asia or taking away steppe provinces or british ones (when we've got a lot of activity up there in both those areas).

[oudysseos]

I wasn't cpmplaining about your choices really, just bitching about the province limit I guess.

[QwertyMIDX]

I just wondered- if the Yuezhi are going, why replace them at all? .

Because they're not on the map at the beginning of the game, and won't be for over 100 years. There's a huge thread about it somewhere in this forum.

[Simmons]

Because they're not on the map at the beginning of the game, and won't be for over 100 years. There's a huge thread about it somewhere in this forum.

I think you miss read that QwertyMIDX I think the question was why replace the Yuezhi at all when you can take their provinces and use them somewhere else on the map not something I agree with but thats how I interpreted it.

[QwertyMIDX]

Ah, I think you're right.

So in answer to that. The provinces still have to be there (in some form), Yuezhi or not.

[GMT]

Why not stuff the entire steppe in one province and add a dozen cities to Greece and Italy?

Seriously, Greece and Italy already have more than their fair share of available provinces. There are lots of other regions on the map that could use a couple more cities.

GMT

[oudysseos]

Actually, if you don't want to add more cities in the centre, fine- but I still wonder if the Yuezhi have to be replaced at all- I mean do you absolutely have to have 21 factions? Just turn the Yuezhi's settlement into a rebel faction and leave it be. I have to say that none of the alternatives that I have seen suggested are much improvement over the situattion now. If it gets to the point where you're inserting a faction of dubious historical value just for the sake of '21' then why bother? Unless the game will crash without 21 factions- that I don't know.

[Keba]

The game doesn't crash with less than 21 faction ... I think EB is around 20 anyways, having gotten rid of the Senate, I could be wrong though.

Considering the way EB seeks accuracy (and their PR strategies), I have no doubt that they have already come up with another faction to put in. IIRC, a discussion on the forums went in favour of a faction on the Arabian peninsula, or maybe in Germania.

[Ludens]

Just turn the Yuezhi's settlement into a rebel faction and leave it be. I have to say that none of the alternatives that I have seen suggested are much improvement over the situattion now. If it gets to the point where you're inserting a faction of dubious historical value just for the sake of '21' then why bother? Unless the game will crash without 21 factions- that I don't know.

Dubious historical value? As opposed to lumping every independent city and tribe that together in an artificial rebel faction?

[oudysseos]

I have always been under the impression that the 'Rebel Faction' was not meant to be taken as a monolith, but rather as a necessary evil in that not every settlement can be represented as an independent faction. I never think as I'm playing that the rebel city I'm attacking in italy is the same political unit as the rebel city I'm attacking in the crimea- it's just a part of the game engine that we have to live with. The alternative I suppose would be to have all the factions start with loads of cities and immediately have to go to war with each other in order to expand. The 'Rebel' cities just give you some manoevering room, game-play wise. I've never thought that it's meant to represent a single unified faction.

By 'dubious' I meant that it just seems as if we're stretching a bit to insert a faction where there wasn't really one, just for the sake of game-play and balance. That's fine I guess, I was just trying to comment that maybe it's not necessary to have the full 21 factions- maybe the balance is fine as it is, even without the Yuezhi.

[LorDBulA]

but I still wonder if the Yuezhi have to be replaced at all- I mean do you absolutely have to have 21 factions?

Well if we could have more we would have more then 21.
I mean there are lots of kingdoms/citystates that are not represented becouse of faction limit.
Dont wory there is planty of candidates for Yuezhi slot.

[Ludens]

I have always been under the impression that the 'Rebel Faction' was not meant to be taken as a monolith, but rather as a necessary evil in that not every settlement can be represented as an independent faction. I never think as I'm playing that the rebel city I'm attacking in italy is the same political unit as the rebel city I'm attacking in the crimea- it's just a part of the game engine that we have to live with. The alternative I suppose would be to have all the factions start with loads of cities and immediately have to go to war with each other in order to expand. The 'Rebel' cities just give you some manoevering room, game-play wise. I've never thought that it's meant to represent a single unified faction.

You are right, but it's still artificial. The rebels share trade and income. They do not fight amongst each other, or go into any complex political interactions with the player, so your comment surprised me a bit. It was not as if there was a shortage of powerful factions in this theatre, and the current faction list is certainly not the only possibility even when striving for maximal historical accuracy within the limits of the game.

[QwertyMIDX]

We have at least 25 or so factions we could add with venturing into historically dubious territory (at least no more dubious than Baktria or Armenia, which aren't proper indepdent states at the start, although the system we have worked out for them is pretty good).