Your own TW style game: What features would you like to see?

[vartan]

Pretty much exactly like I was thinking, a paper doll interface like what you would find in World of Warcraft, you drag your pilos helm to the helm slot, the soldiers armour stats go up but so does the costs in real time, you could also add complexity if at first only 40-50% of the unit was wearing pilos helms, the rest wearing helms from your existing pool, you would have to adjust a slider to increase the uniformity of equipment all the way to 100% but also increase the cost.

Ah...you went one step beyond what I had imagined. I thought we were customizing a unit we would be training afresh. But nay, you speak of refitting a unit at present. That is all the more complex in that, for instance, I may only be able to refit a unit in some ways (not all possible ways) because that unit is near or stationed in some town that can obviously only provide what military equipment it was famous for (or if you want a more complex system, what military equipment it has stockpiled). On that last parenthetical note, imagine you had to manufacture and keep a stock of military equipment. The problem I see with going this far is that not all ancient states had state-manufactured military equipment, at least such is my understanding.

[Spazticated]

Ah...you went one step beyond what I had imagined. I thought we were customizing a unit we would be training afresh. But nay, you speak of refitting a unit at present. That is all the more complex in that, for instance, I may only be able to refit a unit in some ways (not all possible ways) because that unit is near or stationed in some town that can obviously only provide what military equipment it was famous for (or if you want a more complex system, what military equipment it has stockpiled). On that last parenthetical note, imagine you had to manufacture and keep a stock of military equipment. The problem I see with going this far is that not all ancient states had state-manufactured military equipment, at least such is my understanding.

I didn't specify new or retrained units, I don't think, merely how the system would hypothetically work. I suppose, you could create a new unit, give it it's basic load out and more importantly, it's training. For example, create a unit of slingers with the "Rhodian" trait, which could only be trained at Rhodes, once the unit is recruited, you could then only change the equipment, not the traits/training of the unit, these Rhodian slingers could be taken to Rome and outfitted in chainmail, but could not be retrained as anything but slingers.

[vartan]

I didn't specify new or retrained units, I don't think, merely how the system would hypothetically work. I suppose, you could create a new unit, give it it's basic load out and more importantly, it's training. For example, create a unit of slingers with the "Rhodian" trait, which could only be trained at Rhodes, once the unit is recruited, you could then only change the equipment, not the traits/training of the unit, these Rhodian slingers could be taken to Rome and outfitted in chainmail, but could not be retrained as anything but slingers.

Do you suppose people would perceive this as an example of an over-featured asset in a game or rather a plus?

[Spazticated]

Do you suppose people would perceive this as an example of an over-featured asset in a game or rather a plus?

I was thinking on this earlier, what I imagine could be done with a system like this is make the game more player driven, than history driven. You wouldn't need reformations if all the player would need to do is take what would be his pre-Marian Hastati and Principe back to Rome with the requisite buildings/research/whatever and throw them in some new armour to turn them into what is effectively post-Marian Hastati and Principe or he could go into the unit creator and equip, train, and name a new unit exactly like post-Marian Hastati and recruit those alongside the old Hastati.

But to actually answer your question, you could have it as a main game play feature where you essentially let the player loose with a blank soldier canvass and a whole bunch of swords, shields and pointy sticks to make his own unit rosters and otherwise do with as he pleases, or you could give the player his unit roster of historically accurate soldiers and allow the player to tweak and modify load outs a little bit to match his play style or preferences, or somewhere in between those two.

Something closer to the former would certainly be a cinch for modders to work with and if you wanted to play it closer to history, you can, while allowing for the freedom and customization players like me enjoy.

[moonburn]

herm not wanting to nit pick but there was no post marian hastati after mariius you get legionaries since it was the only way the romans had to replace all the "worthy" men they had lost to the germanic advances and most of the men who where left after their "agricultural" revolution only qualified for ascenssi since the great nobles "took" their lands so there was a great increase in lowborn men and a great lack of citizens who qualified for the hastati job

while at the same time the need to maintain regular strong military ocupations of newly conquered lands meant those who did qualify did not want to stay away from their lands since a lost crop meant he couldn´t pay his sons equipment and the empoverishment of his family and thus a reduction of rome´s recruimtnet pool for heavy infantry

[Spazticated]

herm not wanting to nit pick but there was no post marian hastati after mariius you get legionaries since it was the only way the romans had to replace all the "worthy" men they had lost to the germanic advances and most of the men who where left after their "agricultural" revolution only qualified for ascenssi since the great nobles "took" their lands so there was a great increase in lowborn men and a great lack of citizens who qualified for the hastati job

while at the same time the need to maintain regular strong military ocupations of newly conquered lands meant those who did qualify did not want to stay away from their lands since a lost crop meant he couldn´t pay his sons equipment and the empoverishment of his family and thus a reduction of rome´s recruimtnet pool for heavy infantry

My mistake, I never actually play as the Romans, I prefer the Koinon Hellenon or whatever the Greek faction on the Peloponnese is called in whichever mod I happen to be playing, but I knew there was some reforms in there, just replace post-Marian Hastati/Principe with Legionary if you must but the idea remains exactly the same, since either way both units fought in the same manner, the only difference in terms of gameplay are what their equipment was, which I already covered and as I said before, I'd personally like to leave the history up to the individual player in my own TW style game.

[Centurio Nixalsverdrus]

Spazticated, I think your idea is great, but the example with pre / post marians is however not valid.

Moonburn is correct in his statement. The difference between the two units cannot be displayed gameplay-wise just by an armour or training upgrade. This would be wrong, since the higer cost of professional soldiers is not only due to their different equipment, which is not automatically superior to that of a princeps or triarius. Furthermore, the difference between these two concepts is so great that it would just not fit my idea of a historically accurate depiction of the era, even although we are not talking about EB here.

Nevertheless I think your concept is fascinating, albeit perhaps taken a bit too far. Recruitment limited to certain provinces, what we already have in EB, expanded by training and armoury upgrades differing by region.