PE for EB

[kalkwerk]

I understand that EB will not make this for BI, but move directly on to M2TW after finishing this one (?).

As RTR 7.0 took much longer time as initially presumed some made RTR PE, utilizing BI with night-battles, cultures, formations, swimming units, hordes, new factions. I turned out to be a great success. Any plans in the community for making such a "mini"-mod for EB?

[MSB]

There is already an EB mod for BI sire. Thing is you have to create it yourself

To play EB on the BI.exe follow this guide.

I am also quite sure that R:TR PE was for R:TW 1.5. Night battles can be placed in R:TW 1.5 with a small amount of modding and they will be in the next EB build (0.81). I don't think that swimming or hordes can be added however. You will need confirmation off an EB member to make sure.

[oudysseos]

I think that's a great idea. On the other hand, RTR platinum came out AFTER RTR was finished, whereas EB is still in Beta, so it's a little premature.

The minimod I most want to see is a BI port with a conversion of Religion to something more interesting, such as culture or ethnic demographics. What I mean is that each city will have a 'Demographic' breakdown based on the indigenous population plus any additions due to gameplay, so Rome might be 60% Roman, 10% Samnite 10% Greek 10% Gaul and 10%Egyptian. The demographic compostion of a city would affect the kind of troops that can be recruited there and the kind of gov buildings and so on that can be built. If Carthage, for example, conquers Rome, after a long enough time and enough investment in the build tree, they should be able to recruit Sacred Bands there, when the Carthaginian component of the Demographics is over 80% or so. It's only an accident of history that it went the other way round.

Another good thing would be Loyalty. I know that EB has eliminated the possibility for counterfactions, but a Family member with low enough loyalty could always join the Rebels. That, I think, would bring a whole new dimension to the gameplay aspect of EB. You'd have to be a lot more careful who you send off with a full stack on an extended campaign. He just might come back sooner than expected!

But seriously guys, think about it. The greatest achievements of EB are not on the battlemap- sure battle are prettier and more authentic sounding and looking, but it's still basically an RTW battle. EB has had most impact on the campaign play, bringing a whole new dimension to the economic, political and demographic model of the period. Sadly the RTW frame, even in 1.5, is very limited. Some of the functions of BI properly exploited could improve on even the giant leaps that EB has made.



The balloon is just a little token of my esteem.

[kalkwerk]

Another good thing would be Loyalty. I know that EB has eliminated the possibility for counterfactions, but a Family member with low enough loyalty could always join the Rebels. That, I think, would bring a whole new dimension to the gameplay aspect of EB. You'd have to be a lot more careful who you send off with a full stack on an extended campaign. He just might come back sooner than expected!

Well Ive tried out some of those mods with loyalty (TFT, I think Imperator 2 has it too) and Im not that impressed I must say. You dont really have a possibilty to influence it and the tendency it that it goes down to nil without you got the feeling why. Thats rather frustrating imho. Maybe it could be modded in a reasonable way though, but i got my doubts.

As BI came out I was so interested in loyalty because I remembered how it worked in Medieval. But I must say that I never had the feeling that this feature really added to gameplay. Those rebellions could be triggered without it.

[Pode]

"The minimod I most want to see is a BI port with a conversion of Religion to something more interesting, such as culture or ethnic demographics. "

IIRC, any religion after the third in the list causes no unrest, so the full effect of multiple religions is hardcoded to the first three only. I would <dearly> love to see an EB BI feature the "religions" of republicanism, imperialism, tribalism, and apathy (obviously apathy comes fourth in the list and thus causes no unrest). My understanding is that Rome, Carthage, and the KH would start with republican populations, perhaps the Ionian greek territories also, and the rest of the world be either imperialist or tribal. Trade buildings generate apathy, MICs generate imperialism for civilized or tribalism for barbs, and so on for each building set as most appropriate for that faction. Priest units get replaced by orators. The idea is that as the republican factions take more territory and get richer they get pushed towards imperialism via "religious" effects and traits, so that civil war becomes likely. Other factions are affected less, but still face very serious revolt risks in lands with different "religions". It would add back the roman civil war dynamic, as well as generally making for slower conquests, bigger garrisons required, and the real possibility of multi-province revolts. Obviously this would mean devoting 2 faction slots to the republican factions (second one for their imperialist shadow faction), so it's an EB2 thing, when more faction slots come available.

[Zaknafien]

I would love to see the EB community start working on their own mini-mods and PE type versions, with specific builds for certain favorite factions for example. Im all for a "roma" type mini-mod for EB focusing on the Romani with expanding building/unit lists, ancilliaries, etc, at the expense of some other factions.

[MSB]

The bad thing is that EB doesn't have an awful lot of mini-mods for it, but the good thing is that the wondrous EB is almost perfect as it is, we don't really need mini modifications as nothing can really be improved much further than it already has been.

[Zaknafien]

I disagree, say, you always play one faction, like Macedon, for example. There are plenty of extra buildings, units, traits, ancilliaries, etc you could add in for that faction if you were willing to remove some from all the other factions. EB has to be fair to every faction, but if you wanted a "custom edition" of your EB for your favorite faction, thatd be a mini-mod id love to play.

[Thaatu]

I think it's a little too intimidating to customize EB, with all those scripts and all.

[Danest]

Hmm, if religion can be modded to represent something else like demographics, then maybe economic social classes? In real life, I suspect that the reason that one couldn't possibly ever recruit exclusively Triarii would be that there just aren't enough men in the upper social classes. You could never, ever depopulate a town just by recruiting elites in rl, no matter how much money you had. The poorer Hastati social classes would make up a much larger portion of the population.

[Dumbass]

"The minimod I most want to see is a BI port with a conversion of Religion to something more interesting, such as culture or ethnic demographics. "

IIRC, any religion after the third in the list causes no unrest, so the full effect of multiple religions is hardcoded to the first three only. I would <dearly> love to see an EB BI feature the "religions" of republicanism, imperialism, tribalism, and apathy (obviously apathy comes fourth in the list and thus causes no unrest). My understanding is that Rome, Carthage, and the KH would start with republican populations, perhaps the Ionian greek territories also, and the rest of the world be either imperialist or tribal. Trade buildings generate apathy, MICs generate imperialism for civilized or tribalism for barbs, and so on for each building set as most appropriate for that faction. Priest units get replaced by orators. The idea is that as the republican factions take more territory and get richer they get pushed towards imperialism via "religious" effects and traits, so that civil war becomes likely. Other factions are affected less, but still face very serious revolt risks in lands with different "religions". It would add back the roman civil war dynamic, as well as generally making for slower conquests, bigger garrisons required, and the real possibility of multi-province revolts. Obviously this would mean devoting 2 faction slots to the republican factions (second one for their imperialist shadow faction), so it's an EB2 thing, when more faction slots come available.

This idea sounds really good, rather than having religion, which didn't really actually cause as much unrest as intended in Barbar, you have political situations. I don't know where you're going with the faction slot idea, even though Med 2 has 10 more faction slots I think that many people would rather see 10 new factions like "helvetti" or "pergamum" than "Roman rebels" (I think this is what you mean in what you said).

[Pode]

Where I was trying to go to with shadow factions was to allow for republican vs imperialist civil wars within the factions that started as republics, especially Rome. If the player pushed too hard for one political system before converting the population to support it, having the other system as a shadow faction would mean an organized rebellion against him would form and contend with him for control, where normal rebels are pretty passive and would just wait to be picked off individually. The biggest gripe I can make against EB is that there doesn't seem (so far) to be a structural provision for Roman civil wars. I'd gladly settle for only 7 new factions instead of 10 if it meant that in exchange I got the equivalent of Pompey vs Caesar and Antony vs Octavian.
As for the social class thing, I think that's much better modeled by the recruitment pool mechanic of M2TW, where the pool of elite units is smaller and refreshes slower than lower class units. You could tie recruitment to the percentage of a "religion" present in a city, but I think it would still end up being a binary allowed / disallowed thing instead of being limited to a given number of units. Maybe vai script you could make the percentage of equites "religion" in a city go down every time you recrutied a cavalry unit until it dropped below a threshold percentage and no more cav could be recruited. Can you put a religion percentage conditional on unit recruitment in EDB?

[Zaknafien]

Yes, but why make other factions suffer at the expense of one faction? there are lots of factions with viable reasons for counter-factions. A fair portrayal of every major culture/regional power is better suited to EB, I think.

[Pode]

You're the Roman historian, not me, but I was under the impression that Roman civil wars had a greater impact on history than the expansionist efforts of Pergamum or Helveti (to use the examples given earlier).
As great a historical model as the rest of EB is, I just can't wrap my mind around a perpetually unified and harmonious Rome under the Senate. That's why I want to see the structural ability to have civil wars in EB, not because I want to be unfair to other factions. Ideally any faction who started to conquer the entire Med should run into civil difficulties, but AFAIK the faction cap is 30 + slaves, so a shadow for everyone means only 15 factions instead of the existing 20. Based on my limited knowledge, I suggested shadow factions for the three factions I thought would be most likely to experience wars over style of government instead of just wars over which particular individual got to be the despot, because those seemed to me to be the style of war where popular support (as modeled by religon percentage) mattered the most.

[Zaknafien]

Perhaps, but what would most people want, another Roman faction, or several more unique factions to play as?

[Pode]

Perhaps, but what would most people want, another Roman faction, or several more unique factions to play as?

I can only speak for certain about what I want, but I'm reasonably confident that many more people have heard of (and might therefore be interested in) Roman civil wars than in the glorious conquests of Pergamum or any other contenders for the 21st-30th faction slots. I'm not trying to be a dick, just pointing out what I feel like would be the best way to improve EB using the religion features available in BI and M2TW, why I feel that way, and why I think others might feel similarly. I'm debating it with you because I don't have the skills to implement it myself, so if I don't convince the EB team it won't happen

[Bava]

Perhaps, but what would most people want, another Roman faction, or several more unique factions to play as?

My bet is on another unique faction. Played as Rome only twice (vanilla and a RTRPE campaign), i just dont like it . Perhaps the 6 years of latin classes have something to do with it

[Kugutsu]

I have to agree, I would far rather see more unique factions than have roman civil wars.

I have barely the patience for a roman campaign anyway (which is why I am waiting till EB is at its next big stable release before I even start one) because I tend to expand far faster than the reforms can accomodate, so I end up with a large empire defended pretty much only by local levies (its too annoying to train hastati/principes/triarii in italy then ship them round the world). I have never played long enough to ever see the Marian reforms in EB, which is why I am waiting before I dedicate the time to a campaign so I can see the full benefits of the faction.

[Pode]

By my count just now (slow day at work), of the 82 distinct campaigns described in the "your empire" or "AI progression" threads here and on TWC, 23 are SPQR campaigns. 28% of public beta play time appears to be devoted to playing Romans. In light of this, are 10 new factions the best use of the 10 new faction slots in M2TW, or would x new factions + (10-x) civil wars be more popular?
I think that's about as hard as I can possibly lobby for getting my way without being a <complete> jerk about it, so I'll shut up now and go play 0.80, which I'm loving even if it's lacking in self-aggrandizing Romans

[Zaknafien]

(its too annoying to train hastati/principes/triarii in italy then ship them round the world). I have never played long enough to ever see the Marian reforms in EB, which is why I am waiting before I dedicate the time to a campaign so I can see the full benefits of the faction.

Thats why the Republic was an essentially isolationist power that did not like expansion.

[Tellos Athenaios]

the glorious conquests of Pergamum

Ah, gimme Pergamon! Please?

[Sdragon]

Most of my campaigns are Roman but I'ed hate the idea of throwing out uniqe playable factions in favor of some shadow faction. Although I'ed prefer something else over Pergamom, another pike fest army. (Unless EB are going to add them in and prove me wrong :P )

[Tuuvi]

I have an idea for civil wars that you could use with EB1 as well as EB2. Currently EB has gladiator uprisings turned off, but maybe they could be turned back on and modded to spawn full legions instead of gladiator units.

[Zaknafien]

IMO that'd be silly. Youre going along managing your Republic when all of a sudden--whamo!-- "Uh, senatores, excuse me, but a Legion appeared outside."

Now, something could be scripted to simulate civil wars within the Senate, with accompanying armies popped up along with the varied scripts that accompany them, but this would be a big project.

[Pode]

A much bigger project than a shadow faction :P

Sorry, couldn't resist that setup.

[Dumbass]

What is this gladiator uprising thing for RTW and what does it do? Spartacus!?

[Omanes Alexandrapolites]

Hi,
The gladiator uprising was a feature in vanilla R:TW which occurred when a city with an arena or above rebelled. In this case the rebels get some posh and high quality gladiators and other elite/medium troops rather than the regular rebellious and disorganised rabble of revolting peasants and town militia that would normally emerge. The Gladiator Uprising rebels in R:TW also used to get peculiar units too that the player could only get through cheating. These super units, such as the big bad and ugly Yutseb elephants (huge elephants that send anything that gets near them flying) were awfully hard to beat and just a few of them were capable of wiping out half a stack of elite Roman legions. I hope this helps you understand the uprisings. Cheers.

[Zaknafien]

its about as stupid as having gladiatores fight as units in an army in the first place. lol

[cunctator]

Not gladiator uprisings but I've prepared a small minimod for 0.81 that adds first cohorts (with unique number) and the lost/captured eagle feature from vanilla R:TW back to EB.

[Zaknafien]

Wow, thats great Cunctator. We should discuss this in the workarea. What if we had the "passing under the yoke" event to replace that in the pre-Marian timeframe?