Anybody fancy co-operating in a balancing mini-mod for vanilla?

[Barbarossa82]

This is a call out to anyone who would be interested in collaborating on a limited mini-mod for vanilla RTW, aimed at redressing the problem where certain factions continually get wiped out early in the game without a chance to deploy their best units, while others take over the world with tiresome predictability.

The aim of the mini-mod would not be to make significant alterations to Vanilla but to simply try to shore up some of the weaker factions and moderately nerf some of the superpowers.

I have done some of the very basic modding, but anyone else's help, ideas, advice or input would be welcome.

The following are the early ideas:

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Non-Roman Generals
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Because of the way the Marius reforms work after 1.2, it is not possible for non-Roman factions to obtain their upgraded versions of their generals' bodyguards without waiting for the Romans to undergo the Marian reforms. Without scripting (which I am not competent to do), it is impossible to get the generals to upgrade when the faction builds its highest-level governor's building (which was the way it was supposed to work in 1.1).
So, I have decided to give all non-Roman factions their upgraded bodyguards from the get-go. I have already got this working in my game, and it seems quite straightforward. It also has the happy side-effect of depriving Egypt of their free chariots, since their upgraded generals are cavalry.
Generally this does not affect the diversity of a faction's military unit, because the models for the non-upgraded generals are mostly used for other units anyway. The only factions (I think) for whom this is not the case are Armenia and Parthia, who no longer have access to any javelin cavalry as their generals' bodyguards are now Cataphracts from day one. Ideally I would like to give each of these factions a separate, recruitable version of the heavy javelin cavalry (just like the Pontic Heavy Cavalry) so that they will not be deprived of them. Obviously the soldiers are in the game somwhere, but I don't have the know-how to create new unit cards to represent them.


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Britain
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The Britons, like the Egyptians, benefit from the dramatic over-valuing of chariots in auto-calc. So far I have reduced their starting money from D5,000 to D3,000, decomissioned their navy, taken away Smaraobriva from them and given it to the Gauls, disbanded their army on the continent and moved their family member Belenus to Great Britain. Now they are still a significant problem for anyone who wants to invade Britain, and they may cross onto the continent later in the game once they have built themselves some ports, but they are no longer chewing up the Germans instantly.


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Gaul
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So far I've given them Samarobriva which has been confiscated from the Brits, left them a small army in it and have slightly upped their starting denarii to D6,000. Hopefully they will now not be walked over quite so easily by the Julii, especially as they are no longer threatened so much by the Brits.


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Germania
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More testing is required to see what happens to them when the Britons are not ripping into them from the start of the game. It seems their Spear Warbands are more powerful post-1.5, so they may not need any more help.


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Carthage
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Major considerations are upping their starting cash, providing them with more men in Sicily, and giving them a naval squadron capable of challenging the Romans near Sicily.


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Seleucid/Egyptian Problem
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Egypt is waaay too powerful, again due to the chariot effect, while the Seleucids always get ripped up with the Egyptians normally the main perpetrators. Modifications I am considering making:
* Taking Sidon from the Egyptins and giving it to the Seleucids
* Giving the Seleucids a powerful field army near Damascus
* Financial adjustments
* Reducing Egypt's starting forces
* Increasing the size and power of rebel forces in Bostra and Petra to keep the Egyptians occupied.
*I'm reluctant to nerf the stats of any of Egypt's units because the problem is not so much with their power as with the overvaluation of chariots in autocalc. Egypt still has to be viable when played by a human.


Anyway that's the outline of what I'm trying to put together. If anyone would be interested in putting forward ideas or testing, It'd be good to have your input.

Barbarossa82

P.S.: I suppose we should wait till after Alexander before starting substantive work as it may come with a patch for Rome which might remove these issues (or create others!)

[Barbarossa82]

Update:
Since there seems to be some confusion over whether a new patch is forthcoming (1.7 and 1.8 are missing from the series), I have decided to temporarily suspend work on the balancing mod until we find out what is going on. In particular if chariots are rebalanced in auto-calc to be more realistic, there may be less need for some of the changes.

Anyway, playing with some of the early changes mentioned above implemented, I have experienced particular success, with the following observed (obviously this is only from one campaign, so consider this provisional).

GAUL: Far more effective. Resisted Julii attacks in northern Italy, temporarily owned Illyria and Dalmatia, resisted Spanish onslaught and even took Osca. It's taken the Julii and Brutii combined until about 209 BC to really chew them up.

GERMANIA: Powerful expansion eastwards, as far as Themiskyra. Have consolidated central Europe, at 209BC they are still a major power at war with Rome.

BRITAIN: Developed perfectly according to my hopes. Without a navy they basically sat on Great Britain until around 220 BC, although they swiftly developed a powerful military which would be a real challenge to any invader. After this period they hopped across to Hibernia and took it, and in approximately 210 BC they landed in Gaul and began an attack, too late to provoke an early Gaulish collapse but just in time to ignite a war with the Julii which hopefully will eventually see the Julii take Britain. Perfect!

Stand by for the results of my attempts to boost Carthage and the Seleucids.

EDIT: Dates should be BC, not AD. *smacks forehead*

[Byzantine Emperor]

I think this is a great idea. Do you need any help at all?

Also I would love to do any testing for this. Egypt has been overpowered far too much so far...

[Barbarossa82]

Thanks for your interest, Byzantine Emperor. As mentioned above, at the moment I am waiting to see if a 1.7 patch is forthcoming for the vanilla imperial campaign, in case it does something about the chariot auto-resolve problem.

If you would really like to help then it would be great to have someone run some test campaigns and experiment with different faction start-up situations. Carthage might be a good place for us to start, since it's not concerned with the chariot issue. The problem with giving advantages to Carthage, as with the Seleucids, is that we don't want to ruin the fun of playing as that faction in a single-player campaign. If we were to just, say, start them off with 50,000 denarii each then it would certainly help the AI but there would be no challenge for a human playing as that faction.

My thoughts were that we could do any or all of the following:
* Provide them with a more powerful navy - this would be historically accurate as well since Carthage were very much a maritime power. Positioned near Sicily, it might help prevent the flow of Romen reinforcements onto the island.
* Slightly increased starting finances
* Transferring one or both of the eastern "bloc" of Spanish provinces to Carthage. This would also be historically sustainable (at least the southern one of the two) and would give the faction a bit of a boost. Spain always turn out to be rampantly powerful in my games so I don't think it would hurt them to be nerfed slightly anyway.
* Changing the personality of the faction from "balanced smith" to something else. Not sure what though as I'm not very experienced with what the different effects of these are.

So if you wanted to experiment with any different combinations of those and give a brief report of results to be compared with mine, that would be great help, thanks!

[Byzantine Emperor]

Yep I will try some of your ideas, see how they work. Carthage could really do with a medium infantry unit, or iberian infantry boosted. Have you compared them to Hastati? Same upkeep and worse in flexibility and hugely worse in defence.

[Woad Warrior]

You could give Carthage Scutarii, theres a skin for them.

Also, I find Dacia does far too well, often defeats Germans along withe Britannia, then expands north and rolls over Scythians. Perhaps you could reduce attack of Falxmen and reduce starting money and armies.