Roman troops are too strong at the beginning.

[mrtwisties]

Sir, if you have joined months ago, you would've known never to start a flame war with flame war loving people.

I mean, come on...

[mrtwisties]

</jeremiah>

[pezhetairoi]

Steady on! The Rycalawre thread reflected poorly on a lot of those people who posted in it, and threatening Livius Andronicus with similar treatment... well, it's embarrassing for the rest of us.

I agree with your last paragraph Pez. But all Livius Andronicus did was offer measured criticism of the mod on a historical basis, something that's generally welcomed by the members of the mod team. He seems like a pretty intelligent guy, and he's entitled to object to some of the condescending responses he received. Suggesting that he ought to read months of our postings before contributing himself is an example of what he's objecting to, not a refutation.

A fair enough point, fair enough indeed. Perhaps I was a bit too hard on him. But hey, I don't disagree with you, L. Andronicus has made historical points, more importantly, CORRECT historical points. :) But I guess therein lies the difference between him and me, maybe I've been here too long or something, but I've learned to take things not quite so hard, and to discern true condescension with what is essentially harmless Victorian mannerisms, which Boyar's was. Though his later post did provide Andronicus with justification had he wanted it.

And I wasn't threatening Andronicus, at least, I hope I wasn't appearing to be so. I was merely pointing out the stakes involved, because he's shooting himself in the foot had he persisted in going down that path of reasoning.

One thing though, that perhaps you'll agree with me: Andronicus really was quite harsh, overly so. It's like someone going 'ooh, what a nice little kitty!' only to have your petting hand clawed into shreds. Apart from that blip on the radar, I didn't find his attitude at all objectionable. Rather liked it, in fact.

I would object to being -forced- to read for months before I posted, myself. Anyone's free to join and post, but by going public you have to accept some people accidentally toeing the border of your personal space and take it in stride, not lash out at them first time, first thing. It's not very...community-minded. Reading the forum was the only way that came to mind that could minimise such friction if you were the touchy sort.

And I don't think the Rycalawre thread was all that bad, really, had it just stayed at the banning vote and not further on, to the picture thing, which I did not like one bit. I think the banning thing was quite justified, actually, because this guy has made baseless accusations and made an asshole of himself trying to smear EB. Which is terrible considering we have some fervent EB lovers here. I make no apologies for that, because I read every single one of Rycalawre's posts and was responding to them in general, rather than just that one post, though it would already have been quite enough on its own.

Alright, back to topic!

Early Romans are just fine and balanced, I say! Pit them against the Gauls and Makedonians, and heck, you might even say they are -under-powered!

EDIT: You're right, the E-reputation paragraph DID sound pretty harsh. I have excised it, and hope not too many people have read it. But frankly, there isn't a -nice- way of getting the message I had in that paragraph across. You don't challenge a pistol marksman to pistols at ten paces. It's downright foolish. His objections would have had more force and generated less indignation had he not mentioned 'E-reputation'.

[Livius Andronicus]

Wow...Thanks for all the replies everyone. It has been a pleasure reading your ideas and I think I understand things a little more clearly now.

As I think about the past campaigns that I've played, it does seem that in general the AI is fairly easy to exploit. The difficulties in employing certain moves by an AI led factions make much more sense to me now.

I apologize for coming off a bit aggressively at first as almost an attack on the mod. So far I have enjoyed playing the campaigns and the fact that a human player with the right moves is able to be successful with any of the factions is really an amazing part to this game.

I have been currently reading "The fall of Carthage" by Adrian Goldsworthy. So far it seems, especially in the 2nd Punic War, that Rome easily could have fallen if a few events would have had a different outcome.

From all of your great input I think I will try another Romani campaign and add some house rules. I have seen a few posts about adding house rules to make a campaign a bit more realistic.

Any thoughts on possible house rules for the Romani to recreate the Punic Wars to some degree?

The first that I will employ is sticking to dates as closely as possible. So for instance I will not invade Sicily until 264, etc...

[Pharnakes]

Look, come on people, you are being rediculous. All I can say is I'm damn glad I joined 9months ago, when these boards were always polite and welcoming to new members. Now, I know you all don't mean any harm, but these last few weeks, this forum has been rapidly down hill. If I was a junior member today, I'm not sure I would want to make the effort to learn the petty little grudgies and mannerisms that make the rest of us behave in such a unfriendly fashion.

Cut the poor guy a bit of slack, can't you? If you are the mature, logical, polite characters that you are demanding he be, then you wouldn't have responded to him as you did. Maybe he touched a nerve, well its not his fault, it should be the duty of a long standing member to ease a new chap in as smothly as possible, not all just jump on top of him, when he rases a perfectly vallid question, in polite and reasonable language.

Honestly, get your acts together. Your treatment of Rycalawre was bad, but at least there was a reason for that. If this is how you now treat polite new members, well, I'm disgusted.

[pezhetairoi]

No sweat, Andronicus. Great to see you back.

For house rules directed against the Poeni, perhaps you could limit yourself to 20 units in the field at any one time as long as you do not expand beyond Italia. That may help, and perhaps you could also mandate that only 10 could be in the south, in Sicily, while the remaining 10 campaign in the north. Furthermore, if the First Punic is what you had in mind, you could even besiege cities, not build any rams, and conquer Sicily that way. Though that might not actually prove too much challenge unless you manually create units for Carthage in Sicily to oppose yourself. The SSbQ AI does not come across as being remarkably amphibious, even on BI.exe, so it's pretty much cut off as is.

House rules aren't actually meant to make campaigns more realistic, not in all cases anyway. They seem to me to rather be meant to make things more challenging by setting restrictions to slow yourself down. Sorta like savouring good food through small nibbles. As I see it, the only way you're ever going to have any challenge with Carthage is to challenge them in Spain and Africa. No other place will do.

I actually made my Romani campaign more challenging by only winning new settlements by siege for the first 20-30 years. Thus my development was slow while I built my infrastructure, while by the virtue of the money scripts, the neighbouring AI factions would grow faster. The real challenge to the Romani only begins, as I see it, at around 200BC. But even then, no matter how you look at it, the enemy is still more tenacious than challenging.

The dates house rule will put enough on your hands as it is.

[HFox]

More proof Roman Armour is way way way overrated....

[Senatus Populusque Romanus]

It is not strong.

Manybe you are playing on Easy or Medium battle setting.

It is miserably balanced and not that strong before Marian Reform!!

[blank]

Manybe you are playing on Easy or Medium battle setting.

er... Medium is the recommended battle difficulty setting
On Hard and VH the AI will get stat bonuses so your units won't be as effective

[Senatus Populusque Romanus]

er... Medium is the recommended battle difficulty setting
On Hard and VH the AI will get stat bonuses so your units won't be as effective

Medium is "RECOMMENDED" battle difficulty setting, but actually Medium is easy.

Think about it.

Players of course use more strategies than AI and how to use terrain better than AI does. Also Veteran players know some "tricks" or "techniques" to win a battle easily.

If you sum those factors up, actually choosing "Hard" difficulty is appropriate setting for EB battle campaigns.

[mrtwisties]

The problem with "Hard" is that it reduces the historical accuracy of the battle simulation. Let's face it, beating the AI is never going to be an impressive achievement. That's why most of us are just role-playing.

[TWFanatic]

Medium is "RECOMMENDED" battle difficulty setting, but actually Medium is easy.

Think about it.

Players of course use more strategies than AI and how to use terrain better than AI does. Also Veteran players know some "tricks" or "techniques" to win a battle easily.

If you sum those factors up, actually choosing "Hard" difficulty is appropriate setting for EB battle campaigns.

Agreed. Medium is far too easy, and the bonuses of very hard make it too unrealistic. Hard is the perfect balance.

[Pharnakes]

Yes, hard/hard with fatigue off.

[Tiberius Nero]

From all of your great input I think I will try another Romani campaign and add some house rules. I have seen a few posts about adding house rules to make a campaign a bit more realistic.

Any thoughts on possible house rules for the Romani to recreate the Punic Wars to some degree?

Try very hard to lose battles or don't build an army :P

Seriously the AI is pathetic, you cannot get a challenge out of it unless playing some hopeless faction like Hayasdan, or possibly if you play on Very Hard battle difficulty, which is not a recommended setting for the mod as it makes battles very bizzare, with slingers beating legionaries in melee and that sort of thing.

[HarunTaiwan]

I forget which setting my battles are on, but I have a hard time fighting the Carthagian African Elite Pikemen. Sicily has been switching back and forth for years now. I think I'm medium campaign and either hard or very hard for battles.

[Narhon]

I started with med/med and learned what I could about the game. The first campaign I played with 1.0 was set on vh/vh and I am having to fight a 3 front war and battles are not as one sided as they were on med. I am also loosing some troops from bribes which almost never happened with the med setting.

[The Celtic Viking]

Medium is "RECOMMENDED" battle difficulty setting, but actually Medium is easy.

Think about it.

Players of course use more strategies than AI and how to use terrain better than AI does. Also Veteran players know some "tricks" or "techniques" to win a battle easily.

If you sum those factors up, actually choosing "Hard" difficulty is appropriate setting for EB battle campaigns.

Medium is recommended for a reason, you know. The unit stats are made for that difficulty level, meaning that it's how the units perform in medium difficulty that's interesting.

So your argument that "it's not too strong on hard difficulty" is kind of worthless, and how a player uses unit X better than the AI is irrelevant to the question of whether that unit is over- or underpowered.

[Danest]

I'm playing Hayasdan, fighting Pontos, Ptolies, and Seleukids all at once -- all three stack spamming me each turn. If I survive (even at medium battle difficulty), well, I'll feel quite an achievement. And I think the sauromatae are eyeing my northing cities too... ugh.

[CirdanDharix]

I have been currently reading "The fall of Carthage" by Adrian Goldsworthy. So far it seems, especially in the 2nd Punic War, that Rome easily could have fallen if a few events would have had a different outcome.

I disagree. In terms of manpower and resources, Rome had a large advantage at the time of the First Punic War; during the Second, a Carthie victory would have been a major miracle. Hannibal gave the Senatus Populusque Romanus a good scare, but really, for all the losses he caused them, they had replacements aplenty without even recalling the armies sent to other fronts. There's always the numismatic argument, but then, if we look at the other major Mediterranean powers, they were also devaluing their currencies at about the same time, so we can assume that the value of precious metals was declining throughout the Mediterranean bassin. This may have had something to do with the fact that Rome and Carthage weren't the only powers to be engaged in a heated war at the time; but nevertheless it is a Mediterranean-wide phenomenon, and if it did help the SPQR pay for more troops, it was hardly a desperate measure, since Roman money wasn't trashed and the Roman economy wasn't imperiled by a financial crisis.

Hannibal failed to really shake Roman hegemony in Italy, despite all his political genius. His only chance would have been to take the Urbs herself by storm, but that would have been dicey at best.

[Olaf The Great]

Well, yeah, the stats may, or may not be a few points off, but in general they're alot more balanced then in RTR, Principe's have 32 def, compared to Hastati, which have 27, compared to Sctutarii which have 21.

Rome is pretty overpowered in almost all mods.

[Palasta]

Rome is pretty overpowered in almost all mods.

Yeah, even in the RL-mod they were overpowered.

[Boyar Son]

I mean, come on...

whhyy do you make it your business?

[delablake]

Don't forget about the Battle of Arausio in 105 B.C. The Romans got their asses handed to them by the Cimbri and the Teutones.

mhm and Rome learned how to stop worrying and love the bomb...lol
now, 3 years later Marius wiped out these two Germanic tribes consisting of about 400.000 people at Aqua Sextiae (102BC) and Vercellae (101BC) suffering less than marginal losses. Now, that's getting your asses handed...

[pezhetairoi]

whhyy do you make it your business?

That particular debate is over, friend. Don't restart it. Posting on the forums makes your post everyone's business so there's nothing wrong with mrtwisties. He's entitled to his opinion. Let the matter rest. Besides, what you said was just plain embarrassing to the rest of us, too. Maybe you like flame wars (though I sincerely hope you don't), but you've sorely misread us if you think we like flame wars too. Don't start one.

[The General]

mhm and Rome learned how to stop worrying and love the bomb...lol
now, 3 years later Marius wiped out these two Germanic tribes consisting of about 400.000 people at Aqua Sextiae (102BC) and Vercellae (101BC) suffering less than marginal losses. Now, that's getting your asses handed...

The tribes had splitted, and it would be interesting to know the actual fighting numbers of the tribes in those battles.

Considering they were entire tribes on the move, a large amount of the people would be women, children, elderly or men unfit to fight I'd reckon, AND the rest would be men with no professional training or good, uniform armours, who then get pitted against 40 000 - 50 000 legionnaries & auxilia, led by none other than Gaius Marius himself.

And, of course, attacking the opponent before they were ready at Vercellae did kind of help. Naturally, there's no need to follow the honour codes of the "barbarians", but it does take quite a bit of the glory away from the victory.