Suggestions for v0.8

[edyzmedieval]

Don't worry, be happy.

Cheer up Teleklos.

[Dayve]

YOOOOOOOO HOO HOO HOO DE DO DO DE DO DE DO DE DOOO...

Don't worry.

YOO DE DO DE DO DE DOOOOOOOOOO...

Be happy....

Hoo de do de dooo...

I have a fish on my wall that sings that when you press teh butt0n. BIG MOUTH BILLY BASS!

[stalin]

By the way Edyzmedieval why do you hate me?

[Daedalus]

First of all, congratulations to the achievement of advancing a great game (vanilla RTW) to a brilliant one (EB)! I salute your passion and dedication, EB-dev's! You do make life more enjoyable. AND instructive on things that once were.
Now, ever since I discovered the fun of playing the original RTW two details in it have bugged me, and they still bug me in EB. Perhaps you guys can do something about it.
1. The GLARING red line marking the end of the battle field, destroying the mood which the setting, most often a beautiful landscape, is creating. I find it a bit odd that, when everything else in the game is geared for realism, this practical detail for the game is not. Why can't the border line be marked in a more discreet way, say, a darker shade of the grass, if the line passes over grass, and a darker shade of the rock, if the line passes over rock? It's important to know where this line goes, for tactical reasons, but I don't believe it's necessary for it to be THAT visible (you get a rough idea where the line goes by looking at the minimap). It think you can get a significant boost of the 3D-feel of the open vistas etc if you can make this line disappear from afar and only discernable when up close.
2. The anonymity of the individual unit. Sometimes, when a particular unit has made a heroic effort in saving the battle, for instance, I would have liked to be able to keep track of this unit's fortunes and career from then on, having earned a famed status among the regular multitude of units. But, as soon as I stack this unit with another unit of the same kind, I don't know which one is which. If something could be done to remedy that, I think battles in which units with a known history participate will be even more exciting, since more is at stake: not only the outcome of the whole battle, but also the outcome for the individual units (you don't want to lose a famous unit - other units don't matter that much). Maybe individual units from a civilized faction could be identified by the order number and region in which they were created, like "Century VII Latium" for the seventh Roman unit (of a particular kind) trained in Latium. Or by the naming system for new units used at the time, whenever there was one. For factions which historically did not even fight in closely defined units one could perhaps go along the way which village they are from (taking them all untruthfully as coming from different small villages, for the sake of added interest), like "Warband of (name of village)". Another way is to go through the name of the unit's captain, but that would mean that the captain seemingly survives all battles for a couple of centuries, if the unit survives that long. Not so good. Well, I'm out of ideas...

What do think, EB-dev's and EB-fans?

[edyzmedieval]

Sorry man, but you simply can't do it because of the RTW engine. Both of them.

By the way Edyzmedieval why do you hate me?

I feel like I'm t3h big clown from Monty Python's Circus, being left out. I don't get it.

[stalin]

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=54474
ROFL

[Dayve]

I think the red line is hardcoded... But i've never seen anybody complain about it and i've been reading the forums since before the game was released... I agree though it does kill the mood.

Secondly... There's nothing we can do, the armies are a bunch of nobodies... In MTW each unit had a captain, and if he died another captain would take his place... CA did away with this when they turned over to the dark side and decided to make RTW with as little depth as possible to save time and resources for as much shiney nice graphics as possible to sell as many copies as possible... Only thanks to mods like EB has depth been added to RTW... If it wasn't for EB and RTR i would have stopped playing a long time ago...

[edyzmedieval]

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=54474
ROFL

BIG LOL, ROFL and LMAO.

Twas a guy on TWC who got RTW BI before everybody. And I hated him for that.

Basically a joke. Nothing serious. My copy came 4 days after.

[stalin]

I know I couldn't post here since I was a junior member and way to impatient

[Dayve]

Don't sweat it... BI sucked anyway. I must've played it for all of 3 days before never playing it again... Any mods out for it yet?

[stalin]

Mods for BI? WHY? I can't buy anything in that shop anymore tho

[tk-421]

I noticed awhile ago that some of the rebel faction banners in battles were colorful and had real logos on them. I think it would add a lot to the campaign map if all of the slave "factions" had their own faction banners on the campaign map. I know some rebels have different logos, but I don't know if the game allows for as many individual faction banners as their are rebel factions. I'm sure that this would probably be low priority for 0.8, but its just a thought for something in the future.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

We found out they can have their own factional battle banners, but not campaign ones. So that's why we broke up the rebel groups even more (to give them even more uniqueness) for the last patch. Unfortunately we can't do the campaign ones. We would have done that already if we could for the strat map though.

[Avicenna]

Some of them do have different banners though, it's just that they're all in the same colour.

[Daedalus]

OK, so I will still get bugged occasionally.
I didn't have much hope for my second issue being solvable, anyway. I realized that naming data for units could be tricky to add, if the game wasn't constructed to contain that sort of information from the start.
The other issue is a bigger disappointment, though. When I'm defending outside the cities, especially when I'm outnumbered, I often find a position in the corner of the battlefield the best to defend from, so as to stop the enemy from all too easily coming around my flanks. But when I look at my troops standing there I see this big glaring red line behind them, destroying the sense that they are out in the landscape somewhere (am I pretty much alone using this tactic, since no-one else has complained about this before, or am I just pretty much alone in enjoying not only the looks of the troops, but also the looks of the natural setting for the battles?). Theoretically, it shouldn't be that difficult to do something about the red line, since the information that there should be a colour there already exists, so one would only change the information to a different colour. But if that information is hardcoded, I guess that means it's unaccessible in some way.
Pity.
By the way, another small detail (which other people haven't already addressed). I wouldn't mind if something was done with the text for the quotes at the bottom of the screen when the game is loading something. I have a hard time reading it sometimes as it is now, against the new background for EB. The text for the version number of EB doesn't have that problem.

[edyzmedieval]

I've sent you an important PM Teleklos.

EDIT: Clear up your Inbox please.

[Teleklos Archelaou]

I wish we could make shadows appear behind the text to make it easier. Sometimes it's easy, but sometimes it's not, esp. if the text is long. But no one has cracked what makes the font files different or maybe if it's even possible. We may be stuck with that issue unless we either (1) get rid of quotes completely, or (2) make the whole bottom third of the screen basically dark to contrast the yellow font off.

[Daedalus]

It seems to me that the loading picture for EB was not designed fully with the quotes in mind. Because I don't see the problem with the content, position and sizes of things the designer of the picture wanted to portray having been adjusted to and supportive of the quotes, them being there at the bottom of the screen.
I like the quotes. They bring a certain quality to the game.

[edyzmedieval]

I love the coins.
Can you guys add more screens please? WITH coins.

[stalin]

Splash screen of the Casse elite unit, bottom line says something about "curry" which the British didn't get until colonial times
seriously: it should say carry favor

[Teleklos Archelaou]

Merriam Webster's Dictionary - curry favor [ME currayen favel to curry a chestnut horse] : to seek to gain favor by flattery or attention

If anyone sees any corrections in those loading screens though, I need to save new versions of them, so I can make changes easily now if there are some that need making. Just let me know here.

[stalin]

You guys ARE good...
Sorry for the inconvenience

[Trithemius]

If anyone sees any corrections in those loading screens though, I need to save new versions of them, so I can make changes easily now if there are some that need making. Just let me know here.

I seem to recall that some of the grammar seemed a little torturous, but I can't remember the specific examples now - I'll keep an eye out though.

[Greek_fire19]

Mmm, it seems good to me, mostly. The only thing I can think of is that there are two versions of the biblical quote about nations not turning against nations and beating their spears into plowshares and yada yada yada. One of them has the original hebrew as well, however, and while a little ancient hebrew never hurt the atmosphere any, it's pretty unreadable unless you speak ancient hebrew. Furthermore, given the size of the quote it rather clutters up the screen, so I'd prefer it if that version of the quote was removed and only the one with the english translation was kept.

[Mithradates]

Any work being done on making the trees slightly smaller than gigantic or is that a hardcoded issue i remember seeing something on another mod where they made smaller trees.

[edyzmedieval]

Teleklos said somethig about this issue....

[HamilcarBarca]

testing

[HamilcarBarca]

Well here goes - my first post.

I have played RTW and RTR for a longtime now, and I am about halfway through my first EB campaign (as Carthage of course).

I have been active in the developers forum of RTR, serving as a historical adviser on Carthage and the Punic world. I hope some of my contributions/ideas will be included in RTR 7.0 when that gets released!

Before I make any suggestions, I want to say what a great job you have done. The mod is superb, and I'm enjoying it more now than when I started.

Particular highlights for me include;
* faction icons are excellent (its nice to see the proper Carthaginian faction icon!)
* the EB naval system is a superb, simple system; major success here!
* the map is good
* the 'skins' amd models are great
* the EB move towards more expensive, slower builds is a good one; it means that field armies represent a larger investment, and hence their commitment to battle or siege is a bigger decision. This is as it should be.

Some suggestions (in part perhaps driven by a lack of experience with EB on my part);

1) the game needs some Balearic slingers; I note that the EB website refers to them in the Kart-Hadasht section of 'factions', but I cannot for the life of me find any!
2) elephants; as far as I can tell I can only build these in Cirta; the elephant resource appears in both Carthage and Thapsus (to name only two), but I don't appear to be able to build elephants there (and I now have a royal barracks in bot cities). It also appears that Carthage can only build units comprising the smaller african forest elephant. I believe that Carthage should be able to employ Indian elephants as mercenaries; remember Syrus the last of Hannibal's elephants, and Punic depictions of towered-indian elephants.
3) while i like the map, i think that in the spirit of continuous improvement here are some suggestions;
- get an extra province into Sicily (Agrigento); get another faction onto the island; in 272BC Hiero could be said to be an subject-ally of Pyrrhus - why not make Syracuse a part of the Eperiote faction?
- I think that the map structure in North Africa has been well designed to try and minimise the 'war of the sands' between Ptolemy and Carthage - but the best solution is to have fewer provinces in North Africa. Pull provinces out, and make the bulk of the Sahara impassable (It's so big I even sent a spy-explorer all the way to the south of the map to see if you guys had placed a sub-saharan province there).
- Let me say that your Spanish map is, to date, the best I've seen. I'm hoping RTR7.0 might steal the title soon, but for now, its yours. The Guadalquivir Valley in southern Spain should be 'tweaked'; the region of Turdetania (a.k.a. 'Tartessos') should have cities like Illipa and Castulo as its capitals; Mastia should not be Carthaginian in 272BC - it was a Barcid era conquest; Gadir should be (cosmetically) depicted as being on an off-shore island, as it was the BC Manhattan (though of course I'm not suggesting that its an 'island' for the purposes of movement).
- Sardinia is depicted with Kalaris as its capital, and Olbia as its port. This is wrong. In 272BC the largest ports in Punic Sardinia were Tharros, Sulci and Nora - probably in that order. Roman-era Sardinia had Nora as its provincial capital - as is evidenced by the Roman milestones throughout the island. To better depict Punic Sardinia I would suggest a Nora-Tharros or Nora-Sulci combination to serve as capital-port, and therefore represent the south-western focus of Punic Sardinia.
- Megalithic maltese tombs shouldn't be located in western Sicily.
- Two arguments I have waged unsuccessfully among my fellow developers in RTR and that I kindly foreshadow here with you is that (1) Sardinia should be home to two provinces; the south-western half of the island being Punic and the north-eastern half being indigenous Nuragic, and that (2) an extra Punic province be squeezed into western Sicily, being the Punic city of Panormus. My reasoning is that by adding these provinces to Sicily and Sardinia, and stripping provinces from North Africa, you can design a game that better depicts Carthage as being a central Mediterranean power, rather than just sitting in the Sahel and Mahgreb of North Africa!
4) lets get the ship designation system coordinated between the factions! And I would love a skin for the Punic "5er".

I would dearly love to have a dialogue with your 'naval' developers about how we might even further improve it.

Well done on building a great Mod!

HamilcarBarca

[Krusader]

Thanks for the feedback. I'll answer a few of your questions.

1) We have Balearic Slingers made, but they are going back to the lab for some reskinning.

2) Elephants are still discussed. Giving Carthage Indian Elephants as mercs. Maybe. Maybe not. I will at least forward this suggestion.

3) We are at our maximum number of provinces. The map is not yet finalised and we are talking about rearranging provinces when v1.5 bugs and CTDs have been fixed and probably reducing the North African ones. Adding a province to Sicily might work, but I think other areas might have more priority though.
Sardinia though would probably NOT get split into two provinces.

- Malta is part of western Sicily so the wonders were added to that province to represent whoever holds it, also holds Malta.

- And I'll forward your suggestions regarding Iberia & Sardinia to the mappers.

- I don't recall exactly the events from the Pyrrhic Wars, but Pyrrhos abandoned Italy & Sicily after Beneventum, and I don't think the Syracusans would still remain allied to a loser? That is the depiction of Syracuse I think EB has.

4) I'll get him to reply here. And I think a skin for the "5er" is made/being made.

[stalin]

Thank god for not changing the already crowded areas. Sicily with 5 provinces looks real crowded just like their greece