I'm playing a roman campaign right now and it got me thinking about the roman campaign experience. So far the mod has managed to do very well, especially with the hellenistic nations. Of course, after the wonders are removed and Greece and Macedon further nerfed (I see a nice change in 3.3.4 already) they will be much better. What keeps eluding me is the challenges that the Roman republic/empire faced over time.
1.Carthage. The Punic wars forced the romans to adapt, really adapt. A navy was built, generalship improved, armament was more or less standardized. I think Carthage could still use a little bit of push. Not too much, since we want Rome to prevail as AI faction as well, but maybe a little. By the way, is Carthage still with naval invasion preference in 3.3.4? I deflected a few puny attempts in the 270s. Has anyone thought of reversing Rome and Carthage in terms of land and naval invasion preference? I know it's technically not correct, but it would be interesting to see if it would improve the gameplay. Perhaps we would see more historical roman expansion then, if it proves feasible. Mare Nostrum, anyone?
2.Cavalry based armies.
Romans usually face a hellenic faction in the east, not Parthia.
The first obvious decision is to give a dramatic autoresolve boost for HA(so far I only consider HA, cataphracts may need to be added as well). There is no other way that comes to me, in which to simulate the effects of nomad tactics of hit and run, bait and ambush, divide/disrupt formation and destroy...
Armenia should be left only with merc HAs. Until someone more knowledgeable on the subject, like Nakharar, shares some sources, I think it's a gameplay choice. This should take care of Armenia going to town. Besides, we'll be giving them heavy javelin cavalry.
Parthia should be able to expand westwards. So - respective victory conditions might help, although someone suggested the AI does not behave in any obvious way considering those; maintenance cost should be lowered; distance problems should be taken care of by giving loyalty boost in provinces which later belonged to the Parthian Empire.
There was also the problem of small cavalry army conquering new province and not being able to hold it. I haven't read thoroughly the scripting thread, but perhaps it is possible to trigger the appearance of a few low cost, low quality infantry garrison units when a city is conquered by Parthia or Sarmatia.
Sarmatia should tear apart through enemy armies, but not be able to conquer much south and west, so - distance problems for them. I see in this thread http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=196593 that Jamey is working on them and it seems that he's on the right track. Just bear in mind that they'll be having much more effective armies, with the HA boost.
3.Barbaric invasions.
Caused by overpopulation, in a way, and fierce and short-lived(well, comparatively speaking and most of the times).
Gauls and Germans are coming along nicely, Dacians are ok with their awesome fear causing infantry, but they all still behave like normal factions. What if there's a trigger which, when certain barbarian faction reaches a certain population level, it creates a horde in the respective regions - say Northern Italy for Germans, Macedon and Illyria for Dacians, etc. We'll need a re-emergent "generic barbarian" horde faction though. I don't think giving armies in these regions directly to the corresponding barbaric factions would work well.
4.Civil wars.
Well, for these I don't have any ideas off the top of my head. But they were a real pest for the late Republic. Again, some kind of scripting might be useful.
I'd like to hear more thoughts on these issues and how to overcome them and especially Quinn and Jamey's input on what can and can't be done. I've yet to dig deeper into the modding threads.
I'm not sure how to give Carthage a push, but I'm open to suggestions. As for their naval preferences, I think that's fixed in a hotfix.
Making Rome prefer naval invasions would probably get strange, or just involve them doing to Carthage what Carthage currently does to them. That's my guess, anyway.
I'm pretty sure Armenia did have HA...Tigranes da' Man seems to have fielded them. Their HA are much more expensive than most, though.
As for HA autoresolve boosts, I'm not entirely sure that's necessary. They already have a couple of extra autoresolve hp. Is the general consensus that they aren't tough enough in autoresolve?
Auto-generating the occasional horde would be pretty cool. I don't think we can do that with a living faction, though, and I don't think the game allows for re-emerging factions like M1TW.
Civil wars will only work if we have a rebel shadow faction + loyalty enabled, which is an option.
RTR Platinum Team Apprentice, RTR VII Team Member, and Extended Realism Mod Team Coordinator. Proud member of House Wilpuri under the patronage of Pannonian
The ExRM forum: come for the mod, stay for the Classical History discussions. Or vice versa.
1.Carthage vs. Rome
It might be interesting to change Roman victory condition to mostly coastal provinces and set naval invasion on. I'd like to experiment with that, but I'll have more time after two weeks. I think it is possible to let the AI control all the factions, how can I do it? Also, does the toggle_perfect_spy work from the console with BI 1.6?
As for Carthage, my first idea is to change their victory conditions, for example, set Osca or Arse as target, instead of Numantia. The next thing would be to decrease their armies in Africa and increase those in Sicily and Iberia. Also, move the starting Iberian army nearer to Carthago Nova, it might stall because of pathfinding issues(I'll try to test that too).
On a side note, I played through 15 years of a Parthian campaign on hotfix f, there was literally no action - Sicily remained as it started, in Spain only the Iberians took one province. In Sicily, after initial unsuccessful attack on Agrigento, the carthaginians did nothing and so did the greeks, which are now being pushed out of Greece by the Macs. Epirus conquered Rhegium, but Rome is putting more and more pressure on them.
2.Horse Archers
Tigranes da Great fielded pretty much everything, just because he could, so much was the oomph of Armenia of his time. Here ,however, http://www.public-domain-content.com...h/C36P11.shtml
in a battle description, his horse archers are said to be Amardian, which was apparently a tribe from a region south of the Caspian Sea. So, if even during the height of antique Armenia, their horse archers were merc/allied(not in the roman sense), in fact, in plain text called foreign troops, I think we can surmise that the armenians of that time did not employ HA on a national basis. So I suggest removing them form the faction roster and adding them to the merc pool in limited quantities. I would speculate, without having any sources at the ready right now, that the Armenians began employing HAs much later, under Byzantine/Sassanian influence.
Which leaves HAs as a faction unit only for nations that were nomads or employed nomad-like style of warfare, namely Parthia and the Sarmatians. Now, one thing about RTW is that it either cannot or does poorly simulate this type of warfare. It features pitched battles in the sense of head-on clashes, which were mostly avoided by nomads/nomad-like armies. There is no or limited simulation of ambushes, feigned retreats, hit and run, pursuit in depth, etc. Having been through Aradan's EDU guide, it seems that we can affect autoresolve only by changing the extra_hp input. Given the efficacy/historical accounts of this warfare style, I'd suggest the following benchmark:
HAs against infatry with limited missile support of equal numbers -> win with light to average casualties.
HAs against infatry with limited missile support of twice the numbers -> close defeat or win with average to heavy casualties.
Sarmatia - I've only glanced over the scripting guide, but it seems possible to script apperance of few basic garrison units / exterminating populace when a city is conquered. I think the Sarmatians would be much better off with one or both of this scripts; especially the second one would be quite realistic - we are talking nomad raiding fun here, after all. Perhaps I should suggest this in Jamey's thread, he's already tweaking them.
Parthia - I think I already mentioned it - lower maintance cost and lower effect of the distances. Perhaps another starting region would help as well. The eastern map is all kinds of screwed up right now; Hecatompylos, for example, should be just south and a little bit east of the Caspian Sea, not where it is now. We might move it there and give it to Parthia, seeing as how it was its capitol for a while.
I believe Bactria could use a nerf - I can't remember a game where the Parthians did actually well - the most was to put pressure on Bactria for a while but then both states would be conquered by the Seleucids. As far as I know Herat was part of the Aria satrapy and not the Sogdiana or Bactria, which were the first to secede. I've not given it much thought though, so there may be a way less radical then taking a whole province from Bactria.
3.Barbs
The problem with barbs is that we represent them as whole factions, whereas historically they were lots of different tribes. The romans dealt with barbaric incursions by wiping out the specific tribe but not by waging war on all Gallic or Germanic tribes. Simulating separate tribe with generic barbarian rebel faction won't be feasible though, now that I've thought it over. I suppose we'd have to rely on depopulation of the nearest cities - menaing we make barb units cheap and numerous. That way, at least people playing on huge would see something more realistic. But then again, I don't think the AI would sue for peace when just its border provinces are low on manpower.
4.Civil wars
I can't think of anything sensible short of having a shadowing roman rebel faction, but a faction slot will find better uses, I think. We'd have to just make big empires hard to maintain.
I haven't played much BI, at least not to the point to get loyalty problems, how exactly was that implemented? Can we make generals rebel upon low loyalty + some other sensible trigger condition?
I know this may be way out there, but is there a way to reduce distance penalties through roads? This would reflect the Parthians having good roads (maybe give the same benefit to silk road et al) while the Sarmatians would suffer with crappy roads.
While the Sarmatians, didn't even have roads, they moved pretty fast throught the steeps (at least for battle). The used mainly large cav based armies. I like your idea and I think roads already do that, but it should be improved a little. Any way Jamey might tell us a bit more.
2.Horse Archers
Tigranes da Great fielded pretty much everything, just because he could, so much was the oomph of Armenia of his time. Here ,however, http://www.public-domain-content.com...h/C36P11.shtml
in a battle description, his horse archers are said to be Amardian, which was apparently a tribe from a region south of the Caspian Sea. So, if even during the height of antique Armenia, their horse archers were merc/allied(not in the roman sense), in fact, in plain text called foreign troops, I think we can surmise that the armenians of that time did not employ HA on a national basis. So I suggest removing them form the faction roster and adding them to the merc pool in limited quantities. I would speculate, without having any sources at the ready right now, that the Armenians began employing HAs much later, under Byzantine/Sassanian influence.
Armenia and Bactria are the non-nomadic factions that use HAs currently.
The current Armenian faction roster is:
Cataphracts
Horse Archers
Archers
Skirmishers
Heavy Spearmen
One problem with removing HAs from Armenia is that their unit roster goes from skimpy to inadequate. We need to make sure that Armenia gains units at least one to one if we remove any or Armenia goes to being essentially AOR + Cataphracts as their unit roster (their Archers and Skirmishers are pretty equivalent to the local AOR units).
Originally Posted by Iskandar
HAs against infatry with limited missile support of equal numbers -> win with light to average casualties.
HAs against infatry with limited missile support of twice the numbers -> close defeat or win with average to heavy casualties.
In hand fought battles, this sort of thing will happen. In autoresolve, there is a magic formula for strength that gets compared.
Originally Posted by Iskandar
Sarmatia - I've only glanced over the scripting guide, but it seems possible to script apperance of few basic garrison units / exterminating populace when a city is conquered. I think the Sarmatians would be much better off with one or both of this scripts; especially the second one would be quite realistic - we are talking nomad raiding fun here, after all. Perhaps I should suggest this in Jamey's thread, he's already tweaking them.
I'm trying to avoid anything so drastic to fix Sarmatia. So far, the improvements are looking good.
Originally Posted by Iskandar
Parthia - I think I already mentioned it - lower maintance cost and lower effect of the distances. Perhaps another starting region would help as well. The eastern map is all kinds of screwed up right now; Hecatompylos, for example, should be just south and a little bit east of the Caspian Sea, not where it is now. We might move it there and give it to Parthia, seeing as how it was its capitol for a while.
Work is ongoing on map improvements. I'm not in the loop on that, so I'll leave commenting on that to those who are. I know that we were talking about combining some of the steppe and eastern Germanic territories and using the freed up settlements to make changes. One change we discussed is adding a third settlement for Parthia.
We can change maintenance costs, but as far as I'm aware distance penalties are global across all factions.
Originally Posted by Iskandar
I believe Bactria could use a nerf - I can't remember a game where the Parthians did actually well - the most was to put pressure on Bactria for a while but then both states would be conquered by the Seleucids. As far as I know Herat was part of the Aria satrapy and not the Sogdiana or Bactria, which were the first to secede. I've not given it much thought though, so there may be a way less radical then taking a whole province from Bactria.
I'm not convinced the problem is Bactria rather than the fact that Parthia is very weak. Starting with half as many territories and no heavy infantry in their roster makes them drastically weaker from an AI expansion standpoint.
Originally Posted by Iskandar
3.Barbs
The problem with barbs is that we represent them as whole factions, whereas historically they were lots of different tribes. The romans dealt with barbaric incursions by wiping out the specific tribe but not by waging war on all Gallic or Germanic tribes. Simulating separate tribe with generic barbarian rebel faction won't be feasible though, now that I've thought it over. I suppose we'd have to rely on depopulation of the nearest cities - menaing we make barb units cheap and numerous. That way, at least people playing on huge would see something more realistic. But then again, I don't think the AI would sue for peace when just its border provinces are low on manpower.
One massive problem with the AI is that it recruits units with no regard for settlement growth. That means that the AI will blithely depopulate its entire nation if we allow it. That's one of the many issues we have to deal with to make the barbarians work.
If we elected to go with barbarian tribes rather than cultural groups, the resulting tribal factions would be too weak to matter in the game. As it is, the barbarians are winding up as speed bumps rather than major players.
While the Sarmatians, didn't even have roads, they moved pretty fast throught the steeps (at least for battle). The used mainly large cav based armies. I like your idea and I think roads already do that, but it should be improved a little. Any way Jamey might tell us a bit more.
Sarmatia tends to build all cavalry armies, which keeps its movement high. Its generals also have a trait which allows them to ignore movement penalties in winter.
As it is, roads increase movement and trade, with each level of road having a larger impact. The trade/caravan roads do not have that effect, they only increase trade.
No way to reduce distance penalties, sorry, although I suppose we could give law bonuses to road levels.
We're definitely working on the map, but I'm not sure if we've gotten to that area yet. PatricianS sent me his working copy, but I won't be able to look at it much till Saturday. Parthia is definitely on the to-do list, but right now Dacia is at the top.
Well, when we give Armenia the new heavy jav cav, do you think that will make a difference? I see Iskander's point about Tigranes and the merc./allied cav. Also, does anyone have other suggestions for Armenian units? I don't want to entirely denude them of unique units, or they'll be no fun to play.
Jamey's probably right about Parthia being too weak. A third territory for them might be a real game-changer.
Jamey's definitely right about the barbs (a topic he knows more about than I). I tried representing tribal groups in Iberia and Dacia in one of the early 3.3 betas, but it went terribly. They just stagnate. And the AI will definitely depopulate itself if you let it...I've seen more experienced players discussing exactly that issue with Germany in Vanilla.
RTR Platinum Team Apprentice, RTR VII Team Member, and Extended Realism Mod Team Coordinator. Proud member of House Wilpuri under the patronage of Pannonian
The ExRM forum: come for the mod, stay for the Classical History discussions. Or vice versa.
In hand fought battles, this sort of thing will happen. In autoresolve, there is a magic formula for strength that gets compared.
I don't get what you mean. Could you elaborate?
The armenian unit roster should be OK - they'll get heavy javelin cavalry similar to the pontic Thorakismenoi Hippakontistai, perhaps with a tad better stats. I'm not sure whether they should have skirmishing ability though. With the heavy spearmen and the aor units, Armenia should be fine. We could substitute the cataphract with some kind of heavy lancer, but so far I haven't found any conclusive sources on either, so it's pure gameplay decision.
@Quinn - Nakharar mentioned two armenian units that I couldn't find anything about on the net, could you ask him about that? One was gentronakan goond, the other I forgot.
About Parthia and Bactria - I suppose we should examine the Parthians again after giving them one additional region. Perhaps if the map south of the Caspian sea is reworked, so that cities are nearer to each other, the parthians would naturally go south, with the corresponding win conditions. I also like how there are no direct roads between Parthia and Bactria - it makes conquering harder. A question though - how do you feel about giving parthian generals the same trait that sarmatians have, for the winter movement?
Another thing - can we have a road law bonus, specific to Parthia?
Also, I forgot about the bactrian hippotoxotai, but I suppose they'd have limited role, given Bactria's diverse roster.
I'm glad to hear the map is being redone. Quinn, since you are working on Dacia right now - could you make the Balkan peninsula region borders stick to the Danube? It would make much more sense, given that it is a natural barrier and the Romans/Byzantines/Bulgarians used it exactly like that.
As for the barbarians - yeah, that's perhaps the aspect of the game that needs the most work. I must say though, in the few campaigns that I've started after 3.3.4, the Germans are doing quite well. If they could conquer Gaul, they might pose a serious threat to the civilized south.
Essentially, what I mean is that we can change the stats for units to make them behave in hand fought battles the way we'd like them to. For autoresolve battles, we're at the mercy of the hardcoded math. For example, we can't make horse archers better against heavy infantry but worse against foot archers. We can only make horse archers better or worse.
Originally Posted by Iskandar
The armenian unit roster should be OK - they'll get heavy javelin cavalry similar to the pontic Thorakismenoi Hippakontistai, perhaps with a tad better stats. I'm not sure whether they should have skirmishing ability though. With the heavy spearmen and the aor units, Armenia should be fine. We could substitute the cataphract with some kind of heavy lancer, but so far I haven't found any conclusive sources on either, so it's pure gameplay decision.
Horse archers are a very strong unit in the hands of a human player. Their loss is going to be felt keenly by some. I think Armenia will be OK if we substitute in the cavalry we're talking about, but I'd still like to see Armenia gain another more unique unit.
Originally Posted by Iskandar
@Quinn - Nakharar mentioned two armenian units that I couldn't find anything about on the net, could you ask him about that? One was gentronakan goond, the other I forgot.
What sources are available about the Armenians?
Originally Posted by Iskandar
As for the barbarians - yeah, that's perhaps the aspect of the game that needs the most work. I must say though, in the few campaigns that I've started after 3.3.4, the Germans are doing quite well. If they could conquer Gaul, they might pose a serious threat to the civilized south.
For 3.3.4, there were some nice changes to the Germans. They are much more competitive now. Personally, I'd like to see them expand into some eastern territories (Vicus Gothi, with its silver mine, should be high on the German priority list, but it isn't) before they go after Gaul.
As you've seen in the other thread, the barbarians are my current project. I hope that by the time I'm done, they will be more of a threat to the civilized regions.
It's been a while since Quinn and I hashed this out. I know that we popped several of the settlements up to Large Towns (they had the population, but not the palace). Also, the Vicus Cimbri / Sveaby border is dramatically different, which causes the AI to get stuck trying to get to Sveaby much less often.
There might have also been a general weakening of rebel garrisons in Northern Europe. Beyond that, I don't recall what if anything we changed. Since Quinn implemented the changes, he might remember or might be able to point you to the thread where we discussed it.
Sorry, I don't remember all of the German changes. They're working much better now, though, and as soon as we remove Sveaby they should be in even better shape.
As for the Armenians, I think Nakharar was suggesting the Azat cav. We already have a Gund, we just call it the heavy spearmen. I looked over the RS Armenian list and I think their heavy archers seemed the best-sourced and least redundant of the lot.
RTR Platinum Team Apprentice, RTR VII Team Member, and Extended Realism Mod Team Coordinator. Proud member of House Wilpuri under the patronage of Pannonian
The ExRM forum: come for the mod, stay for the Classical History discussions. Or vice versa.
As for the Armenians, I think Nakharar was suggesting the Azat cav. We already have a Gund, we just call it the heavy spearmen. I looked over the RS Armenian list and I think their heavy archers seemed the best-sourced and least redundant of the lot.
Heavy Spearmen are bricks. If you can protect their flanks and force the enemy to engage them head on, they take almost no casualties.
What are the heavy archers like? Armored, decent melee fighter, has a bow as the main weapon? That would be a vicious unit to add to any roster.
I think so. I wish I could find some sources on the ancient Armenian military.
RTR Platinum Team Apprentice, RTR VII Team Member, and Extended Realism Mod Team Coordinator. Proud member of House Wilpuri under the patronage of Pannonian
The ExRM forum: come for the mod, stay for the Classical History discussions. Or vice versa.
After quite a few campaigns in which Sicily was dreadfully uneventful, I decided to play around with Carthage to see if I can fix that.
I first tried to see if there is any way to make Carthage work with naval invasion, but alas, the dumb-as-cork AI always ships half-stacks to Capua, instead of Sicily, regardless of the political/tactical situation.
(descr_win_condiotions->) Anyway, I changed the win conditions:
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
carthage
hold_regions Africa Hispania Taraconenis Sicilia_Graecus Apulia Corsica Cameratum Malta Phoenicia
take_regions 50
short_campaign outlive_factions
romans_scipii spain
(descr_strat->) and changed the starting diplomatic stance to war with the Greek cities(which was true in 278 BC at least, that's where Pyrrhus went after Asculum):
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
faction_relationships carthage, 600 greek_cities
It turns out that capturing Agrigentum is vital for keeping Carthage's interest in Sicily alive. Carthage does ship additional troops on the island, especially if the Greeks take Malta from them. I've seen both outcomes where Carthage or the Greeks end up controlling Sicily. In both cases, Carthage activates itself and starts making trouble in Iberia(sometimes they finish off Numidia first). Playing on Hard campaign difficulty seems only to make the whole process a bit faster, it does not introduce more complications.
Carthage does not make any substantial efforts to recover Malta or Sicily, after it loses all of its provinces on the island. They look to the west, instead.
I'm happy with the current state of business, seeing as how it is more or less historically accurate.
What I wanna do next is see whether Rome can be made to work with naval invasion, thus forcing it to expand historically. With naval invasion on Rome makes nice moves but lacks aggression in terms of consistency and army size, but without it the Romans conquer most of Italy and then get pulled into war with Gaul and start expanding north. If anyone has any ideas on the matter, I'd appreciate it.
I'm not sure how to give Carthage a push, but I'm open to suggestions.
I would suggest to move the "Collosus of Rhodes" to the Carthage region... Obviously its appearance would have to change... Maybe put it straight on the Carthaginian Dock with the apparance of a dock so you won't see it is there. This way Carthage will get a huge sea-trade bonus (which imo is more realsitic than a trade bonus for Rhodes)...
I think the plan is to remove the wonder bonuses form the game, since they tend to give unrealistic advantages, especially the Rhodes and the Corinth wonders. Rhodes should retain nice trade income though, since it was a rich prosperous city.
In fact, if Quinn has figured out how to do that already, I'd vote for it to be put in the next hotfix, if possible. Macedon and Greece are doing way too good most of the time.
In my opinion Carthage seems to do fine with income, the problem is to get them to act more historically and thus be a bigger threat for Rome. Anyway I'm more or less happy with the game after the changes I made. I guess I could try to give them an earlier start in Hispania somehow, but for anything more I believe that we'd have to script the game heavily, which is not feasible/optimal/in the spirit of the mod. I'm turning my attention to Rome, for now.
I think so. I wish I could find some sources on the ancient Armenian military.
The LA public library has this book as reference only: Contributions to the Archaeology of Armenia translated by Arlene Krimgold
It is a collection of Russian archeology in Armenia.
It also has this as a reference only: The armeniad : visible pages of history by Boris Baratov
This is a collection of photos of monuments and acheological sites. It may or may not have any actual value, depending on the photographs.
I'll see if I can get to the library and take a look at these. Since they are reference books, I won't be able to take them home. Parking is a bit of a pain at the main library branch ($4 per hour except on weekends and evenings) and it's a bit inconvenient to get to. The book collection is amazing, though, so I can't complain too much about visiting it again.
Issues of ExRm form Roman point of view
. What keeps eluding me is the challenges that the Roman republic/empire faced over time.
.
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Originally Posted by Iskandar
