Fleet speed

[MiniMe]

Need help!
Is there any way to somehow modify fleet speed?
(all vessels have the same speed, do they?)
It takes 8-12 turns to travel from Sicily to Crete, and Mediterran is NOT a Pacific ocean.
Current situation entirely ruins the idea of talassocratia, my islanders are doomed to live in exile without visiting capital and helping each other with reinforcements.

[Horst Nordfink]

I agree.

Should fleets not have drastically larger movement spheres? According to Cato the Elder in his "fig speech", Carthage was about 3 days sail away. It would take you more than 2 years to sail from Carthage to Rome on EB.

[TWFanatic]

Perhaps all admirals should be scripted to recieve hefty movement bonuses upon recruitment.

Speaking of movement speeds...is there any way to make a general's movement bonuses effect his entire army, and not just his bodyguard unit? Or is this hardcoded?

[MiniMe]

Perhaps all admirals should be scripted to recieve hefty movement bonuses upon recruitment.

Could be a solution!

Speaking of movement speeds...is there any way to make a general's movement bonuses effect his entire army, and not just his bodyguard unit? Or is this hardcoded?

They do affect his entire army, one of my uberstacks can't move at all because:
1. it's winter;
2. my ubergeneral is "on his deathbed".

[Malik of Sindh]

And my general started olynpic games in the middle of the sea.Someone really needs to make the admirals move more.

[Bootsiuv]

If TW's idea worked...that would be great....although, you would still have to make it a little unrealistic, otherwise you could sail from india to greece in one turn....or something roughly resembling that. I don't really know what the sailing time is, but you get my point.

Then again, would that really be such a bad thing?

[MiniMe]

And my general started olynpic games in the middle of the sea.Someone really needs to make the admirals move more.

Unfortunately (please, correct me, if I'm wrong) admiral's and general's movement bonuses are not cumulative and while you transport a general it's his movement bonus only that affects vessel speed

[Bootsiuv]

Unfortunately (please, correct me, if I'm wrong) admiral's and general's movement bonuses are not cumulative and while you transport a general it's his movement bonus only that affects vessel speed

You may be right for the turn the general enters the ships, but I thought it was based on fleet speed during the following turns.

Edit: Then again, I can't believe no one on the team hasn't already thought of this....it probably would have been done if it was possible.

[Karo]

It's possible to do that. But when you get too much movmend points, you can attack any settelment the AI has so it will be easy to go and cripple the enemy.

[Bootsiuv]

With BI, it might be cool....although I suppose baktria attacking britian isn't favorable, nor is it very realistic.

[Barigos]

The AI with BI.EXE could only benefit from this...

[konny]

You should compare the speed of the fleets with the speed of land movements: it is also not realisitic to need a year from Segesta to Taras by land; but you cannot make that realistic because then you would have armies that might move from the Channel to Rome or from Alexandria to Persepolis in one turn.

When we take the land speed as a base and check how much faster a ship had sailed in those days in any given time (a day or a week) when can claculate how much higher the speed of the fleets must be in percentage, also adding in stops on the way that are not represented by the fleet movement in the game.


Any ideas? I would set the speed of armies to an average of 20 km per day, counting in days of rest. How many knots did those galleys make? And did they sail overnight?

[Bootsiuv]

If I was confident that AI armies wouldn't attack crazy style....like walking through 4 nations to attack some ridiculous crap for no apparent reason, then I would say....let them march from alexandria to persepolis in one season....campaigns could be completed by winter at least...

...but I have little doubt that the ai would not know how to handle it...

[dominique]

Back then, the fleets didn't go out of ports in winter... Plus a thousand others conditions I don't know of. So would you really augment the realism of the game? We could blast the game balance to pieces. For what?

BTW, I'v noticed that I cover more ground with my ships when I'm near the coastline than when I try to cross directly the sea.

[Thaatu]

It would take you more than 2 years to sail from Carthage to Rome on EB.

More than two turns, not years.

[Bootsiuv]

Maybe there are coastal tiles with less movement penalty than deep water tiles a la the civ series? I think I've noticed this too.

[Pharnakes]

Welll, I don't know about anyone else, but I am in the habit of giving all my admairals ~750-1000% movment increase, and it makes the game so much better (provided you impose a few house rules on yourself). I have found no disadvantages, but then I do play on BI.exe.

[overweightninja]

Imho you could probably get the best of both worlds for both land and sea forces by giving them large movement allowances, but then through traits steep movement penalties for forced marching, so you maybe go across a region in a turn or two but any further than that would be restricted. To avoid the penalties you would have to move your armies at a more realistic pace for long distances.
Of course this would probably kill the AI though :)

[TWFanatic]

Quote (me):
Speaking of movement speeds...is there any way to make a general's movement bonuses effect his entire army, and not just his bodyguard unit? Or is this hardcoded? Unquote

They do affect his entire army, one of my uberstacks can't move at all because:
1. it's winter;
2. my ubergeneral is "on his deathbed".

Armies move at the speed of their slowest unit. Your general's bodyguard was the slowest unit in your army at that time. But movement traits for a general only effect his bodyguard unit. Realistically, an energetic and charismatic general could force march his army faster and longer than a fat oaf who commanded no respect whatsoever - or, for that matter, a mediocre general.

[Cheexsta]

IIRC there was some testing done on movement speeds ages ago, and it was found that if characters had more than 100 movement points (they start at 80 before traits/ancils) then there was some weirdness with the AI - it doesn't move the full distance etc. I could be misremembering, though. I did increase the base movement from 80 to 100 in my game (descr_characters.txt) and it does feel a bit better though I'm not sure how the AI is reacting to it.

As for fleets, here's a tip/exploit: if you have slow generals or artillery being transported, select the fleet and hit Ctrl+A (to select all the ships in the fleet). You'll notice that the green "field" is significantly wider. Of course, you won't be able to move ships faster than they would be able to go on their own, so it won't help the OP's question, but for annoying things like Olympics then it's good for getting out of a dangerous area quickly.

[Pharnakes]

The priblem with that though is that generals vey rapidly become exhausted, get ill and then die or become so weak sa to be useless.

[blank]

The priblem with that though is that generals vey rapidly become exhausted, get ill and then die or become so weak sa to be useless.

that's actually funny - on land they would travel on horseback so it's not like they had to walk themselves. And when a guy in his 30s gets "tired" or "under the weather" from riding on a horse then i go "WTF"

And on fleets... on fleets they just have to sit there while the sailors guide the ship so yeah i guess it's very tiring too

[dominique]

Hey don't forget that being a general of an army in campaign is one of the toughest jobs around. It's no 9 to 5 job and seeing the kids at 6.

You don't sleep, you fret all the time about everything from the barrels of flour to the soldiers' grumbly mood and there's the pressure, the little stress from knowing that if you screw, it's the end of your race/polis/faction.

Unless you were an hyperactive animal like Caesar or Scipio, you couldn't just go on eternally. Just look what happened to Alexander after India or Hannibal after Cannae.

[blank]

Hey don't forget that being a general of an army in campaign is one of the toughest jobs around. It's no 9 to 5 job and seeing the kids at 6.

You don't sleep, you fret all the time about everything from the barrels of flour to the soldiers' grumbly mood and there's the pressure, the little stress from knowing that if you screw, it's the end of your race/polis/faction.

Unless you were an hyperactive animal like Caesar or Scipio, you couldn't just go on eternally. Just look what happened to Alexander after India or Hannibal after Cannae.

the rest of the soldiers WALK with their EQUIPMENT and they don't get "tired" (when there's no general in the army you get no penalties), while the guy that rides on a horse and sits in his tent staring at maps gets oh-so-exhausted? Generals sleep rather fine, actually (a general that couldn't sleep due to fear or worry for his soldiers wouldn't last very long), and neither do they constantly supervise their soldiers (that's what the officers are for...).

I don't see what you mean by the Alexander and Hannibal examples. Alexander didn't die of exhaustion, most believe he just drank too much. And he didn't drink because he was "tired" (haha), but rather because his friends were dead and he failed at conquering India. As for Hannibal, he himself fought at the front line in Cannae so yes of course he would be exhausted after that

[Stuperman]

Just some food for thought, a ship traveling at 1mph, for 24 hours a day, for 3 of 4 weeks a month could travel over 3000 miles in 6 months (24*7*18), and IIRC the Med is about 2200 miles from the straight of Gibraltar to the eastern shores.

[cmacq]

Just some food for thought, a ship traveling at 1mph, for 24 hours a day, for 3 of 4 weeks a month could travel over 3000 miles in 6 months (24*7*18), and IIRC the Med is about 2200 miles from the straight of Gibraltar to the eastern shores.

been here before

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=93238

want a simple way to fix this? but you may not want to go there?

[cmacq]

i think the only way to fix this problem is to provide six to eight turns a year?
i don't think anyone wants that?

[TWFanatic]

that's actually funny - on land they would travel on horseback so it's not like they had to walk themselves. And when a guy in his 30s gets "tired" or "under the weather" from riding on a horse then i go "WTF"

And on fleets... on fleets they just have to sit there while the sailors guide the ship so yeah i guess it's very tiring too

You make a valid point...but reducing a general's movement points is the only way to slow down the army. I think the EB team did the best they could there considering RTW's limitations.

I did increase the base movement from 80 to 100 in my game (descr_characters.txt) and it does feel a bit better though I'm not sure how the AI is reacting to it.

Woah! You can increase the base movement points of family members and regular units simply by editing descr_characters??? That's awesome! What did you edit in that file?

[Admetos]

The thing is, if you increase the turns per year, you have to re-write all of the traits and re-forms, and for EB, that is a rather big job...

[cmacq]

right, thats the simple way