Suggestions for v0.8

[Foot]

Another thing I would like to see is the ability to recruit more than one unit at a time. In other words, whatever the time is to build a unit, it would get built exactly that many turns later regardless of where it is in the Que. It doesn't seem realistic to pay now for something that will not begin training for several years. Maybe have a level 1 government build one at a time, a level 2 government build two at a time, and so forth. Or maybe use the barracks level instead, or the population size. Just a thought.

Hardcoded, sorry.

Foot

[Teleklos Archelaou]

One problem is that we want to force Baktria to generally head towards India, but with the change to have them controlling AE and Marakanda too at the start, they too often move into the steppe and forget India till much later. We have been experimenting with different ways to help push them the other way (they never expanded into the steppe historically), but we might not have it all straightened out perfectly by the 0.8 release though. So bear with us there.

[Tanit]

I was wondering, for the unit and faction files, are they just alternate versions of the existing files, or completly separate files? Cause if they were seperate it might be possible to change them into units and factions for EB. Just a thought.

I had a recruitment idea, What if each race, I berians, samnites, galaitians, etc.. was a resource like elephants or steeds. Then you could only recruit those troops in the provinces that have that resource. If these resources work the same as slaves then you can add them to provinces that don't have them already, possibly with colonies. For example. SAy that Iberia and Carthage ally against Rome. Iberia conquers Attium(?) and builds an Iberian colony government or structure there, the city can now recruit Iberians. Then say it revolts to Eleutheroi and Carthage takes it, now Carthage can recruit Iberians there. No more cities that can't recruit anything!

Reasons that many empires didn't have overnight expansion are because of rebels yes, but also the politics of it. Worrying about state alliances with ither Kingdoms and worried about the ramifications of starting a war with another Kingdom, or just having a population that doesn't want you to go to war.

[paullus]

"I have always thought that one man of tolerable abilities may work great changes, and accomplish great affairs among mankind, if he first forms a good plan, and, cutting off all amusements or other employments that would divert his attention, makes the execution of that same plan his sole study and business." - B. Franklin

TA, is that your EB motto? It seems it would be good to be the man of more than "tolerable" abilities...that way you can get distracted.

Speaking of which, how about calling the Indo-Greek hoplites "yavanas," or at least a Greek way of saying it (which might be more accurate anyway), like Indohellenikoi hoplitai/stratiotai.

And another thing! Whatever happened to the Lykians that were previewed all those months ago?

[Angadil]

Speaking of which, how about calling the Indo-Greek hoplites "yavanas," or at least a Greek way of saying it (which might be more accurate anyway), like Indohellenikoi hoplitai/stratiotai.

They are (will be) in fact called Indo-Hellenikoi Hoplitai...

And another thing! Whatever happened to the Lykians that were previewed all those months ago?

They are getting the axe, most likely. We are not too proud of them as we don't think we got their appearance right. They may be eventually replaced by a more adequate Lykian unit.

[paullus]

They are getting the axe, most likely. We are not too proud of them as we don't think we got their appearance right. They may be eventually replaced by a more adequate Lykian unit.

Great news! (to me, at least, as I come from a long line of Lykians, tracing our lineage back 60 generations to Sarpedon)

[Avicenna]

Is this the Lycian king Sarpedon?

[orwell]

Can the Family Retainer be given a +1 to management as well if he's wise as it says in the description? Right now it seems more like a wasted ancillary slot since you almost never have to deal with assassins. If not, is there a quick way to do it?

[morse]

All sound good. I looking forward to the new relise and i am pleased you will be able to play it with the 1.5 patch.

I looking forward to the new faction. Will they be added in the new beta? It would be good if some more of the building descriptions could be finished and appropriate pictures added for certain buildings(many have the roman barraks pic)

Also have you any idea when the new relise will be out. Just a genreal idea would be nice.

Thanks. Regards Morse

[orwell]

Will .8 include the difference between a naval harbor and a naval port?

[Sarkiss]

Will .8 include the difference between a naval harbor and a naval port?

i'll second that.
remove Epic walls please.
what about leaving the ability to build large stone walls for capitals and historically aproppriate cities only?

[orwell]

remove Epic walls please.
what about leaving the ability to build large stone walls for capitals and historically aproppriate cities only?

Having epic stone walls for the major cities makes sense, but every city, where culturally appropriate, should be able to build stone walls. There weren't just 200 cities in all of eurasia and africa, those were just the most important of the time. Every city was historically important, if not for the 'civilized' factions then one of the barbarian peoples.

If you really wanted epic walls removed, I don't think it takes much to remove them from the game. Though, this should only be done with starting a new game, I don't know what would happen if you did it half way through. Go into export_descr_buildings in the data folder and simply delete/back-up elsewhere the information for epic stone walls. Having large stone walls for only the appropriate cites, is beyond my knowledge besides having scripted placement of them and not having them buildable, if through the simple trick of upping the building price to a unrealistic billions of mnai.

[Sarkiss]

Having epic stone walls for the major cities makes sense, but every city, where culturally appropriate, should be able to build stone walls.

yep, but not the Epic or large IMO.
agreed with you about included cities.
the reason i mentioned the epic wall is that AI is unable to besiege them and having them built would make you invencibile, which ain't realistic.

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

Will factions have the correct culture in 0.8?
i.e. Will SPQR be roman rather than seleucid?

[orwell]

I think so, but I can't say for sure. Also, will the GUI's be totally completed? I thought there was only the Roman ones left to implement?

[Teleklos Archelaou]

There may be a few little things to tweak on the GUI's, but they will all be changed. It won't be 1.0 though, so we still have the ability to change stuff up some more if we find little problems and such.

The Romans have their own culture group now - they are entirely on their own.

[Tellos Athenaios]

I've noticed that the Custom Battles sometimes 'lack' roads as part of the terrain. For example: the battle surroundings near the Colossus don't inlcude roads where it's obvious these should be there (I mean a port without roads...). Will this be 'fixed' with .8?

[Tanit]

As the Yuezhi are being removed, will the eleutheroi still have yuezhi type units to keep the culture in the area?

Its probably impossible but has anyone considered writing some sort of petition/plee to the RTW/CA guys asking very nicely if the could make a patch that removes the unit cap and other frustrating little hardcoded things like that?

"I was wondering, for the unit and faction files, are they just alternate versions of the existing files, or completly separate files? Cause if they were seperate it might be possible to change them into units and factions for EB. Just a thought."
by:Tanit

I meant to say the unit and faction files for Barbarian Invasion, are they seperate from the regular RTW ones?

[Cybvep]

Quick question: What about army-like "campaign icons"? Has the team considered putting them in?

[Tellos Athenaios]

On battles:
I've noticed that the custom battle interface is quite different from the campaign battle interface. I mean when playing a custom battle I saw a restyled interface whereas the campaign battles feature the Vanilla interface. And the icons are different too. Will the .8 version have the same interface and icons for both custom and campaign battles? (To me, the custom battle style is better.)

On loading screens:
In my opinion, it's a pity that apparently the way quotes appear during the loading process has not been taken into account during the designing process of the EB loading screens.

To clarify myself: if we look at Vanilla loading screens we can clearly see that they are a true background and more specific they are the background for some quote to appear on. This doesn't mean you should design your loading screens the way CA did, you can for example leave a part of your images for quote appearance only: just like Prometheus did with his RES GESTAE loading screens. The way quotes appear means also that your good looking loading screens are spoilt all because of the fact that the quotes don't 'fit' within the picture.

And to get to my point: will the .8 version have loading screens that aren't spoilt by the way quotes appear on screen?

[Teleklos Archelaou]

(on Cybvep's question) Thought about it. Further discussion was put on the back burner for now though I believe while we take care of more urgent concerns. Might come back around to it eventually *if* we think we can do it well and make them look right.

As for loading screens - yeah, it's a shame they don't work right - but as long as some of our quotes are, we'd have to give up a huge part of the screen. I don't know that we are willing to sacrifice that much of the screen, to just leave blank basically or one color or something. It's something we might come back to later also I think once some of the most important stuff is taken care of.

[Ludens]

Its probably impossible but has anyone considered writing some sort of petition/plee to the RTW/CA guys asking very nicely if the could make a patch that removes the unit cap and other frustrating little hardcoded things like that?

CA is well aware our frustration with these caps, but decided not to change them.

I meant to say the unit and faction files for Barbarian Invasion, are they seperate from the regular RTW ones?

Yes, they are seperate. BI does not change the faction or unit limits.

[Tanit]

Yes, they are seperate. BI does not change the faction or unit limits.

But is it possible to make the BI files accessible by EB? Using some sort of export and maybe even copying all of the cd files off of BI.

Also, will the new features of BI be present in .8 such as loyalty, swimming, hordes for barb factions, etc..?

[Orb]

I think there are a couple of problems with them:

Loyalty - shadow/rebel factions take up faction slots.
Hordes - I don't think it correctly represents the factions and it's generally overpowered.

[orwell]

I *think* loyalty can lead to whoever you choose it to be, it doesn't have to be a shadow faction. It doesn't make sense if you can't set it to the slave faction, rebels. Hordes, I believe, is a 1.6 feature only, along with swimming? I know night battles are, though there is a way to get them in 1.5.

[Ludens]

But is it possible to make the BI files accessible by EB? Using some sort of export and maybe even copying all of the cd files off of BI.

Yes, by copying them into the vanilla data folder. That means overwriting the vanilla data files, so you still end up with 21 factions. Both .exe-files look for their factions into their own respective data files, and these don't allow more than 21 factions. You can't tell them to look in two places.

I *think* loyalty can lead to whoever you choose it to be, it doesn't have to be a shadow faction. It doesn't make sense if you can't set it to the slave faction, rebels.

Unfortunatly, that doesn't seem to work.

[Mithradates]

Has there been any work on formations ie making the AI stick to them etc. Much like work in the darth mod?

[Dayve]

I have a suggestion regarding stone walls, large stone walls and epic stone walls. My suggestion is this: Remove them.

My reason for suggesting this? Because if you don't, then every faction other than barbarians will build a stone wall for every city they own eventually, and every city on the map will have at least a stone wall, and walls are bugged. The missle towers can fire sideways despite there being no holes for them to fire through, and when the walls are huge, the repeating towers will destroy you on the walls firing sideways, even through there are no holes for them to fire through.

I've had campaigns where i played to 200BC, lifted the fog of war to see what was happening only to find, to my horror, that Greece, Northern Africa, Egypt, Asia minor, all of Seleukia and Bactria, have all built stone/large stone/epic stone walls for every city they own, which totally ruins my Roman campaigns as i'll have to conquer every city in Carthage, Greece, Egypt and Asia minor with stone walls... And it's unrealistic i tell you, only important cities had stone walls.

[Foot]

The settlements we have on the map are the most important settlements for the provinces they inhabit and stone walls were a common site for these big cities. Understand that most seiges did not end in assaults by the main army and instead the defending army was either relieved by an assisting force or they were starved into submission. Assaulting stone walls was not meant to be anything less than a slaughter for the attacking force. However I do agree with you with the Epic Stone Walls, they just feel too skyscraper-ish.

Foot

[Geoffrey S]

I'd agree that epic stone walls should be removed, mainly due to their ridiculous scale; or perhaps limit them to the (initial) faction capitals of relevant factions?

But other stone walls should remain. As Foot said, assaults did have a very high cost for the attacker, even great generals such as Scipio Maior and Hannibal would rather avoid an assault. It's only in the later roman army that the balance shifted to the besieger due to their expert siegecraft. Starvation is a much better approach for larger cities.