EB Tweaks

[Beefy187]

Im only getting Democracy in all city except Sparte
Ill go delete my map.rwm

Cheers

[Mouzafphaerre]

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Fourthly, right now I'm experimenting with adding pop growth penalties to the unavoidable governor buildings, and it makes getting your cities huge much more challenging. I might increase the costs and build time on some buildings, as well.

Awesome idea! The AI seems to upgrade too quickly -due to the pop and money boost from EBBS maybe- and that makes expansion into different culture land a great pain. While expansion by itself being pain is good it forces the human player into blitzing; taking whatever before reaching the max town size.

So, while slowing pop growth and increasing the building time of the ridiculously indestructible palace buildings, adding law and happiness penalties in a fashion of enforcing town upgrades would make expansion both more stable and more challenging at the same time.
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[Beefy187]

Just one complaints

Assimilation currently takes 40 turn to build... Thats reduculously long... Could you reduce it to about 20 turns at least?

Other then that. Although I find KH a bit overpowered (which is good) im really loving your mini mod. Fantastic work

[Warlord 11]

Well, I did intend to make a developed economy more powerful than in the regular EB, but I do seem to have made it possible to turn some cities into monstrous cash-cows. Part of the problem in linked to the RTW engine, namely, unit sizes: you're not going to have armies of 30,000 men marching around, so some form of compromise with realism has to found, especially since there's no way either to model hiring mercenaries only for a short fifty day campaign, for instance. Slowing city growth is at least part of the solution; other possibilities involve working on the value of trade goods, or turning up unit costs on the basis of one man representing several. I'd rather not have to reduce the quite large economic bonii I gave certain buildings, simply in order to maintain the difference between developped economies and backwaters, and to give the player (and even the AI) the chance to develop said backwaters.

Don't get me wrong, I love that a major developed city makes vastly more than a backwater, I just think that total there may be a bit too much income. The relative incomes are great, in my opinion. I think making one man in-game representing several is a good solution.

Secondly, I didn't see the unit sizes for ships as a number of ships but as a number of fighting men (assuming the standard sailing complement, although a number of extra soldiers could be brought on board before major battles) for a small squadron (usually six ships). To be honest, it's deliberate that Pentekonterai aren't competitive when compared to Pentereis; I don't claim to be an expert but from what I've read, during the EB time period the triere itself was basically a "poor man's battleship", whereas any ship smaller was not worth considering as your navy's mainstay. The smaller ships (pentekonterai, biremes...) were only used as scouts, liaisons and for anti-piracy operations. Already at the time of Salamis, more than two hundred years before EB, pentekonterai were treated as negligible in big battles (Herodotos disregards them when giving the total strength of the fleets). So it would be unhistorical for pentekonterai, even many pentenkonterai, to be a viable, cost-effective option for your fleet's main line-of-battle ship. During the Hellenistic period, the workhorse of major navies was the pentere, so I suggest that if you want to build yourself into a first-rate naval power, you start gathering pentereis. It's only with ships larger than the pentere that, historically, "bigger=better" was brought into doubt.

If unit size represents the actual number of men on the ship, what is the reason for higher attack on bigger ships? I mean, very large ships might have artillery on them, but a man on a pentekonterai would fight just as effectively as on a bireme, right? I'm not sure how the game engine handles navel battles, so my thinking might be wrong, but in my mind it doesn't make sense.

Thirdly, I've just had a look at the code, and it seems I forgot Ambrakia in the script that regenerates anarchies. Rather than making a new download just for that, here's the code that needs to be added to EBBS_script.txt:

Thank you!

Fourthly, right now I'm experimenting with adding pop growth penalties to the unavoidable governor buildings, and it makes getting your cities huge much more challenging. I might increase the costs and build time on some buildings, as well.

And lastly, I think it's a good idea to make most units dependant, as far as possible, upon buildings and "political conditions" (materialised by buildings, of course), but I haven't tried it yet because I want to finish my ongoing KH campaign AAR ([shameless plug]https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=95143[/shameless plug]) without such a major upheaval as a completely reworked recruitment system. Is it even possible to make a building (other than the barracks themselves!) a requirement for recruiting a unit? I haven't tried it yet.

Not sure about the possibility of a building being a requirement, but your ideas seem very good to me. Thank you for the mini-mod!

P.S. I like assimilation taking 10 years, personally. It shouldn't be something that you build just anywhere. In fact, I wouldn't mind it costing even more.

[CirdanDharix]

If unit size represents the actual number of men on the ship, what is the reason for higher attack on bigger ships? I mean, very large ships might have artillery on them, but a man on a pentekonterai would fight just as effectively as on a bireme, right? I'm not sure how the game engine handles navel battles, so my thinking might be wrong, but in my mind it doesn't make sense.

Actually, the higher the ship was above water then the more advantage the men on her deck had in a boarding action. It's easier to clear the enemy deck with javelins if you're higher than them, while your own ship's bullwarks will give you a greater measure of cover; and also, it's better to jump down onto their deck, than to have to climb up onto it. When the height difference becomes extreme (pentekontoros versus a triere or larger), jumping down can become quite risky, but then the smaller vessel's crew will have to find a way to attach ropes to the enemy ship, and then climb up them, over the bullwarks and then onto the deck--no mean feat when enemy marines are actively opposing your attempts to board them.

There's two other reasons for the attack and defence stats, as well; firstly, faster or more manoeuvrable ships had obvious advantages, and the bigger ships with more rowers tended to be faster, if not necessarily any more manoeuvrable. Secondly, boarding was not the only form of naval combat--ships could, and did, ram each other; bigger ships would have more kinetic energy and so could cause more damage when ramming, while being harder to sink (generally a ship would have no trouble sinking another of the same class, but a pentekonteros ramming a pentere is another matter). This is why I gave the big Celtic sailing ships low attack but good defence: no ram, but a very large and solid hull.

[Warlord 11]

Ah, I see. Thank you for the response. About buildings being requirements for recruitment, isn't that the way the reforms work? I'm not sure, but perhaps looking at how that works could help.

[Mouzafphaerre]

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Having good units, maybe a general on-board adds a lot to the fighting power of your fleet. Maybe it's old information but I just learned it, when a Leisterion armada ambushed my first army going to Ireland. It was with a tie that they defeated and killed my boys.


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[CirdanDharix]

Awesome win, Mouzafphaerre! Also, it's a good thing I bases my numbers of men in naval squadrons on regular sailing complements, not the maximum number of troops that could be used for a big battle..since putting land troops onboard appears to work like it did in reality...

Also, I'm updating the download links. They're abit heavier because they included map.rwm files. New features include pop growth penalties through the annyongly indestructible governor's residence, and mroe expensive sanitation buildings, to make building large cities more challenging. Certain provinces have received +1 to their base farming level, because they supported, or realistically could have supported, very lagre cities during this period. Also, the province in which Utiqa is has been renamed, but I didn't change the city's name (Atiqa to Utiqa) because it was to much hassle, and the EB team must of had a good reason for the A rather than U. Finally, besides a few other tweaks, I've reduced the lethality of long pike phalanxes to match that of Iphikratean short pikes, and increased the mass of all soldiers fighting in a phalanx, whether traditional, Iphikratean or Makedonian; and the mass of cavalry horses (mass makes units better at pushing and harder to push). I hope TWFanatic will forgive me for messing with his phalanxes

[Mouzafphaerre]

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Great! I'll try your tweakies in my next campaign. Thanks for the pop-growth penalties. It's sickening to see every Roman city with the Proconsular Palace and Large Stone stone walls 100 years into the campaign.

Btw, the above battle was a close defeat.
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[icydawgfish]

Could you perhaps upload this to filefront?

[Warlord 11]

I think that Syracuse doesn't have the anarchy script. I have added it into my verion using the format for Ambrakia, but I thought I would let you know.

[CirdanDharix]

Mouzaphaerre: ouch! I guess your fleet sank and you lost the army?

Warlord11:Okay, I'll look into it.

Icydawgfish:
http://files.filefront.com/costzip/;.../fileinfo.html
It's the version with changed costs. if you want the other one, I can upload it as well.

[Mouzafphaerre]

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Mouzaphaerre: ouch! I guess your fleet sank and you lost the army?

Aye!

Whatever the maths (even 2:1) I always lose. That's partly why I'm resolving any brigand/pirate encounters with auto_win.

Is there a spy version of the auto_win command? The AI is doomed to kill my spies more than half of 93% missions and that's ever been since earliest vannila versions. (I shan't exploit, promise! )
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[CirdanDharix]

Have you turned the difficulty way up? Maybe that's it. I do agree with the spy thing, though--they're useless because they almost never successfully infiltrate cities. Even worse are assassins--you'd think Lysimachos the Killer, the best assassin alive, would have more than a 1% chance to kill some Roman nOOb camping in hostile territory with only a handful of bodyguards :(

[Lysander13]

I'm curious about the assimilation system employed by this mini-mod/add-on.
What is it exactly? Is it simply a building one must build that takes X amount of time before you can build your core Govt-I thru IV buildings?

[CirdanDharix]

It's actually two buildings--one "starts" the process and carries its fair share of penalties. The other ends the process and takes 40 turns to build, but will reverse the penalties and allow you to build any type of government.

[Mouzafphaerre]

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Have you turned the difficulty way up?

M/M

The maths of spies is always misleading. I don't attempt <50% chances but it's not rare to see -say- 60% ones manage to infiltrate while 93% gets them killed most of the time.

Fighting against the pirates is vain, unless you stack &#252;ber-ships and attack one-two fleet ones, which both is nigh impossible with EB economy and kills the immersion of reality. So, I've decided to clean them (and brigands) up with auto_win. (Brigands are pure annoyance, have no reasoning behind their spawning, and cause devastation.)
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[Basileus Seleukeia]

I have started a Seleukid campaign with the newest version of your minimod and I have seen that I can't build any kind of regional barracks in my type 1 provinces. The standard EB Build-Tree for the AS depicts that they should be abel to build regional barracks up to the second level with the type ! government. Is that an oversight by the EB team or did you accidentally change it?

[Lysander13]

It's actually two buildings--one "starts" the process and carries its fair share of penalties. The other ends the process and takes 40 turns to build, but will reverse the penalties and allow you to build any type of government.

Out of curiosity, how many buildings have you added to the building tree in this mini-mod? did you perchance have to remove any current EB buildings to add your "assimilation" buildings?

[CirdanDharix]

Basileus Seleukeia: ah, that's my fault I think. It was an early idea of mine to make the two MIC lines more mutually exclusive, but that would require a big reworking of recruitment in general.

Lysander13: I've added four buildings IIRC, but they don't seem to have pushed any EB buildings off the EDB. Even the Barracks_Z is still being read.

[J.Alco]

This is another noob question, so I apologize in advance.

Is this mod compatible with TWFanatic's Fanatic’s First Cohort/Phalanx/Elephant/Chariot minimod? i.e, I can install both without any trouble? Or is there anything about the files I'll need to change when installing this mod?

Also, people seem to be mainly noting bugs in the campaign. There aren't any bugs in the custom battle menu right? I should be able to play a custom battle easily without any trouble?

Thanks.

[CirdanDharix]

J.Alco: there's a version which includes TWFanatic's minimod. AFAIK there aren't any bugs in the custom battle menu, if you miss a factional unit please notify me of it.

Warlord11: btw, I think I've found what was wrong with Syracuse--a reference to the internal name when it should have been the display name.


I've begun work on a new version, taking ideas from various other minimods--notably Pharnakes' assimilation minimod thread and the win conditions and steppe expansion threads on this forum.

[Hax]

Save game compatible?

Oh, and does it work with BI? I.E, does it change anything in the world/maps/campaign/imperial_campaign folder?

[Mouzafphaerre]

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Added assimilation system--assimilation of non-homeland privinces is very expensive and requires you put up with big penalties for a long time. But it allows you to build a Gov I once the process is complete.

Sorry if this has been discussed before but may I suggest that you

1. modify the assimilation so that, after it's complete, you can build gov1 only in previous gov2 provinces and gov2 only in previous gov3 provinces;
   
   
2. also seperate govs 3 and 4 so that you can build gov4 everywhere but gov3 in a much narrower area;
   
   
3. make it impossible for all but steppe factions to build any government but gov4 in the steppe provinces;
   
   
4. add unavoidable unrest penalty to the steppe provinces if they are held by non-steppe factions;
   
   
5. add law bonus to gov3 to balance the distance to capital penalty but not gov4 to hinder crazy expansion?

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[cyberVIP]

Ave!
PLease upgrade filefront link. Rapidshare is not good for me.

[MiniMe]

...make it impossible for all but steppe factions to build any government but gov4 in the steppe provinces...

This won't slow down non-steppe factions expansion into steppe.
Actually, this would do quite the opposite =)

[Mouzafphaerre]

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Unlet them mics too!?
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[Warlord 11]

If you are having trouble with nomad factions sucking check out the second post here: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showthread.php?t=96143 In my game in 227 BCE as Pahlava with those changes, the nomadic factions are doing much better.

[Mouzafphaerre]

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Aye, horse archers autocalc problem. Seen that.
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[Wolfman]

Question. Is this compatible with the city mod?