New factions?

[Smeel]

I might be the only one thinking this, but I don't see the need of putting 10 brand new factions in the game

As I see the current Faction setup for EBI the perfect one, adding new factions should have a clear emphasis on game balancing, Grey death, Yellow death, GREEN death anyone?

Since it already is a shortage of unit slots, this is my thougts on the new factions:

1. making some "tribe" factions, for Spain, Germania and getai. This will certanly balance Sweboz and getai, since these parts of the map are the most desolate. And it wont use a lot of unit slots either.

2. Take one faction slot to represent the "Mini-factions" that won't be in the game even after the new slots been filled, exactly like Roma Surrectum. It certanly seems like a great idea of making some of the independent regions more challenging. Can't argue about this one though, I have only played RS for like 30 minutes, since eb made me addicted to historicaly correct... everything

3. I know this idea have been bashed by the team many times before, but stick with me for this one.
With not using all the faction for new factions, you could *gasp* use a couple of slots for shadow factions representing schisms and rebellions, for the romans seleucids and Ptolemies.
(please don't kill me)

Just my thoughts, and thanks eb team for making this mod.

[Mithridates VI Eupator]

You are of course entitled to your opinion, so I will certainly not bash your ideas, however, I'm going to make a short counter-argument. Mind you, though, that this is just my personal opinion, as I am by no means an EB-member...

EB is all about historical accuracy, and just like the fact that the game might be somewhat imbalanced, the real world was never "balanced", in any way. There were huge, mighty empires, and small, insignificant kingdoms and tribes. None the less, they did all exist, and they all affected the world in one way or another. If they were left out, or replaced by some generic faction in an area that just seemed like it needed a faction, not only would the variety that new and realistic factions give to the game be lost, but the whole concept of recreating a world that, as much as possible, resembles the way the world actually looked, would be ruined. The additional factions will serve to more accurately portray the world, as it appeared in 272 b.C, which will be more vivid and lifelike, if there are actually real factions controlling their respective parts of the map, and not just generic "tribes" added in for game balance. Indeed, the limitations of the game engine makes it impossible to portray the world exactly as it was, given that there are an infinite amount of exogenous factors that impact the world, and that cannot be accurately recreated, but I feel that 30 factions, on the campaign map will give a much more enjoyable, and realistic, gaming experience.

And as always, there is the old saying: The more, the merrier!

[Cartaphilus]

I read all this huge thread (again) and I repeat, please:

1-. Think about the possibility of another germanic faction.

2-. And two celtic factions more would be great: Belgae and Boii. But most important, remove the Aedui from Mediolanum.

3-. Don't forget the numidian and some new faction in Iberia.

[General Appo]

But most important, remove the Aedui from Mediolanum.

I am no expert on this matter, but weren´t the Insubres and such in Insubramog allied to the Aedui? If you have any evidence why the Aedui Confederation should not be in control of Mediolanum please state so, in order that I not be left with the false impression that you are simply stating a wish from gameplay perspective, without taking the historical reality into consideration.

[Cartaphilus]

Well, if you don't want to remove them at least put some type IV or III gov. building (or whatever) there but the Aedui (as all barbarian factions) were not so strong and cohesive than in the game.

When Romans conquered the land of the insubres I don't believe that half of Gaul crossed the Alps to fight for their distant brothers.

The division of the celts were at least their doom. If they could be unite now we speak celtic languages not romanic or germanic ones.

The unity of Gaul was only possible (and not complete) in Vergingetorix time and as an desperate reaction against roman conquest, not in 272 BC.


I believe that the starting position of Aedui and Arverni are a bit overpowered, the Casse and the Sweboz have starting positions more accurate to what the barbarian tribes were.

[Foot]

Right. I mean you're right. How could a barbaric race who couldn't even live in cities (losers) create a government system that allowed the autonomous control of several tribes under one larger tribal confederation. They are all just a bunch of Liberals (in the American sense) and wasters pulling in different directions and never looking out for the community. Only the holy civilisations of Greece and Rome were able to govern large areas.

Or wait, perhaps the idea that barbarians are uncivilised, unable to perform even the simplest administrative duty, is complete crap. Indeed one might even further be able to entertain the prospect that large confederations of tribes sharing a common language (if not dialect) and culture might actually be a rather strong form of government, allowing for a certain level of autonomy, but also centralised authority when the time is required. A sort of warrior democracy, where elected officials, answerable to their people, vote on higher matters in an Aedui council, or something.

But no, they were simple farm people. I mean yes, they could create the most influential form of armour in human history so far (chain-mail), an intricate and highly complicated design of rings, but they couldn't form a government capable of uniting large swathes of the gallic population, that would be just beyond them.

Right?

Foot

[Parkev]

Right?

You've made my day.

Foot, everyone knows that before the Romans there was no such thing as complex democratic cultured civilisations, capable of organising a capable mobile military force, personal hygeine and codifying an established legal system.

Haven't you ever played Rome: Total War?

[General Appo]

You just got trampled by da FOOT

[Mithridates VI Eupator]

But no, they were simple farm people. I mean yes, they could create the most influential form of armour in human history so far (chain-mail), an intricate and highly complicated design of rings, but they couldn't form a government capable of uniting large swathes of the gallic population, that would be just beyond them.

Right?

Foot

Indeed...

I think that the reason people tend to se Gauls as somehow "inferior" to the Romans, Greeks etc. is that the word "tribe" conjures up an image of savagery and disunity, and as the opposite of what we define as civilization. Whereas the civilization symbolizes unity, organization and sophistication, the tribes symbolize disunity, isolation and barbarism. This despite that the tribe is just another form of society, no less complex and ambitious than any other.
Thus, we tend to see the Gauls as a simple and unsophisticated people, without any form of organized society, while the Greeks of the same time are seen as a glorious example of civilization and sophistication. However, Greece in this era presents an equally disparate group of leauges and city-states, just as diverse and prone to infighting as the Gallic tribes. Yet, one is seen as a civilization, the other as a disunited group of tribes.
One of the great things about EB is that it has managed to wash off that barbarian "stamp" that the Gauls have carried, invented by ancient Greek and Roman authors, and reinforced by popular culture of our time in movies and games, and revealed to people the true coutenance of this facinating culture.
Hopefully, it will help people see the Celts, not as bearded savages clothed in animal hides, hitting each other over the head with clubs, but as the vibrant and complex civilization they really were.

[AlexanderSextus]

You guys are correct that the Aedui were sophisticated, but i think he was alluding to the fact that the Aedui had worse things to worry about at the time (*cough*Arverni*cough*) so They wouldn't have marched huge armies across the Alps to defend Medio.... happened to me a couple times in my first couple Roman campaigns, but oddly, not my current one.

[Foot]

As has been mentioned previously, the government system in EBI was not perfect, it is difficult to represent the subtleties of each individual state with regards its position in the faction as a whole. This will be improved in EBII. If you aren't happy about the gov in Medio then you can change it or even remove the province, but Medio was certainly part of the Aedui confederacy during this timeperiod, and whether the Aedui could or could not support it with troops is independent of this fact.

The UK, before WWII, maintained a treaty with Poland regardless of the fact that there was no plausible way it could deploy troops in fulfillment of the treaty if Poland was invaded. The treaty existed even still.

Foot

[Khazar_Dahvos]

Long live the celts!!!!!! I can see both sides of the debate but Foot is right!!!!! It is hard to represent things as they actually were within the limits of the engine!!!

[TheGlobalizer]

My 2 cents/pence/Euro-thingies:

If you're adding 10 factions, I'd rather see the map creep a bit to the east and bring in Indian and western Chinese factions than cramming a bunch of borderline-meaningless city-states to the game. I like the EB1.1 method of bulking up particular cities to reflect the independent city-state concept.

I'm not sure "Egypt"/yellow needs to be countered as much as rebalanced. I'm in my first EB campaign and they are literally sprinting through AS.

I like the idea of Meroe/Kush even if they get run over.

Numidia and Boii are obvious, I think.

[Foot]

We can't enlarge the map anymore than it currently is. This is because of the max number of settlements is 199 which we reached with the EBI map. Additionally the number of unit slots the number of culture slots the number of ... well you get the picture. The scope of what we can mod becomes more and more limited the further we extend the map.

Besides, I would hate it if the map extended so far, the game would lose focus and in an effort to improve scope we would lose depth.

Foot

[TheGlobalizer]

We can't enlarge the map anymore than it currently is. This is because of the max number of settlements is 199 which we reached with the EBI map. Additionally the number of unit slots the number of culture slots the number of ... well you get the picture. The scope of what we can mod becomes more and more limited the further we extend the map.

Besides, I would hate it if the map extended so far, the game would lose focus and in an effort to improve scope we would lose depth.

Foot

Understood -- if we all had supercomputers and the perfect gaming platform, we could play as native Americans, tribal Africans, Eskimos, kangaroos, dolphins, microbes, air, light...

I'm sure the team will make the right decisions.

[Sir Edward]

Understood -- if we all had supercomputers and the perfect gaming platform, we could play as native Americans, tribal Africans, Eskimos, kangaroos, dolphins, microbes, air, light...

I'm sure the team will make the right decisions.

I think you're trying to describe Spore there.

[Puupertti Ruma]

Understood -- if we all had supercomputers and the perfect gaming platform, we could play as native Americans, tribal Africans, Eskimos, kangaroos, dolphins, microbes, air, light...

I'm sure the team will make the right decisions.

Actually, we would still be waiting for EBII to come out in year 2050.

They are actually a mixed blessing the hard codes they are. At least in the quantity types as there are certain limits to what EB can be and therefore it might some day be ready.

[Aemilius Paulus]

Sigh. When will people get this? The EB team can´t just say "lets add a faction there" and "lets not add one there" because it would be cool to have one there and uncool to have one at another place.
Though I am in no way part of the EB team I dare to say that the Gauls will never be represented as a single faction, because that would be grossly unhistorical.

It would indeed be grossly unhistorical, but then again, just about every barbarian faction was split between numerous tribes. Sweboz, Gauls, Iberians, Britons were all composed of different tribes and yet in EB, due to the faction limit, most of them are represented as one tribe.

[Foot]

The Sweboz were one tribe (though their province was inhabited by others as well). The Aedui and the Arverni were tribal confederations that lasted throughout our timeperiod. The Lusotannan were a single tribe, as was the Casse (based upon the Catevelluni). We've chosen tribes as factions, not some vanilla-esque Gallic faction, that was indeed ahistorical. The faction limit is not our problem (though it is still of course a problem). The problem is the game mechanics does not allow us to represent the many tribes that would have co-existed in a province together (and so province limit is a problem). It also does not allow us to represent, within a faction, the different tribes that still often acted independently (so that as the Sweboz expand it is not actually the Sweboz tribe that expand but rather their political and military influence over neighbouring tribes). However we do the best we can and add traits and ancillaries (and in EBII buildings) that allow the player to role-play the political situation that the game just does not allow for.

However to say that the tribal factions themselves in EBI are unhistorical is a gross misrepresentation of what they are and the work we've put into them.

Foot

[Cartaphilus]

You guys are correct that the Aedui were sophisticated, but i think he was alluding to the fact that the Aedui had worse things to worry about at the time (*cough*Arverni*cough*) so They wouldn't have marched huge armies across the Alps to defend Medio.... happened to me a couple times in my first couple Roman campaigns, but oddly, not my current one.

Exactly. That is what I was suggesting.

But, anyway, the celts were not able to build "strong" states as the Roman, the Carthaginian or the empires of the east. Or am I totally wrong?

[Mithridates VI Eupator]

Well, though the Aedui may have been occupied elsewhere, the insubres were still, part of the Aedui confederation.
With that type of logic, Rhodos shouldn't be part of the KH either, as it is doubtful wether the Spartans would have been able to send reinforcements, had they been invaded by the Seleucids, given that Pyrrhos was marching towards them in 272, and the Macedonians being as close as they were.

Still, such things happened...
Take, for instance, the Athenian expedition to sicily during the war with sparta, where they sent a fleet to support the small city of Segesta against the Syracusans, who were allied with the Spartans. The expedition failed, and in the end led to the Athenian defeat in the war, but such campaigns were sometimes undertaken.

The Gauls may not have had the same type of infrastructure the Romans had, but they were still capable of forming coalisions, such as the Aedui confederation, that were indeed a force to be reckoned with. Such Coalisions did also have the capability to make rather extensive campaigns. Also smaller tribes did have a rather complex organization for campaigning.
When they made a migrition in the 50's B.C, the Helvetii drew up lists of people and supplies for their march. The Aedui would probably have been able to do the same, had they decided to make a long distance campaign.

And, if I'm not mistaken, there were transalpine Gauls present at Telamon, so the Gauls were not limited to their direct tribal heartlands when it came to warfare.

[Cartaphilus]

Well, we have to wait till we see the new government system of EB II, that seems to be quite different than the current one.

But if EBII will keep Types (I for more cohesionate states, IV for lessers ones), think about changing the actual situation in Mediolanum, in Balearica et cetera.


In Telamon fought transalpine gauls, the famous Gaesatae mercenaries. But they fight for gold, not to defend an "hypothetic celtic nation" or any treaty. Of course the barbarians knew some kind of diplomacy, they were not like some sort of Conan the cimmerian, and they could be bound to their leaders in a different way than roman or greeks, think about the devotio iberica, the soldurii for the gauls and the comitatus for the germans.

[General Appo]

Exactly. That is what I was suggesting.

But, anyway, the celts were not able to build "strong" states as the Roman, the Carthaginian or the empires of the east. Or am I totally wrong?

Well, if you care to read about on these forums you will see that such often results in one getting trampled by da FOOT
Though of course admitting that you might be wrong can save you.

Of course, from a certain point of view you are correct, the Gauls weren´t quite as good at creating centralised goverments with a single strong authority, but this in no way hindered them from building strong states overall, they just did it a bit differently, what with the tribal system and all.

[Majd il-Romani]

how about samurai japan?

[Jolt]

how about samurai japan?

...?

This tops amongst the most non-sense posts I've seen, along with Abkosee's Bartix and that Hebrew defender guy's arguments.

[Mediolanicus]

Maybe he wants to get rid of Britain, because so little is known about the isles in the prehistory, and replace it by medieval Japan...

You can't argue it isn't a very original idea...

[Megas Methuselah]

Samurai Japan... Well, we could always get rid of the Roman Republic and replace Roma with Kyoto...

[AlexanderSextus]

better, more unique eleutheroi. I wanna send romans to Meroe and actually have trouble taking it. i mean, hey, Didnt Alexander HIMSELF, retreat from attacking nubia?


oh, and i'm not requesting Meroe be added, just made stronger as an eleutheroi state.

[a completely inoffensive name]

I think I can safely inform everyone that the new factions will be released within 1-15 years.

[Turnus]

better, more unique eleutheroi. I wanna send romans to Meroe and actually have trouble taking it. i mean, hey, Didnt Alexander HIMSELF, retreat from attacking nubia?

He didn't even go into Upper Egypt...