Discussion and Announcements

[DimeBagHo]

jjca - I haven't tested this yet but I have read that the Marius trigger has reverted to what it was in RTW 1.0 & 1.1. In other words it happens when a Roman faction builds an Imperial Palace in Italy. So boosting population and income will accelerate the reforms. I know a lot of people want them to happen much later, but I see no reason to worry about that in a Greek orriented mod.

Lord Alameda - General Cam is fun, but personally I really like to be able to swoop the camera view along the spear line just at the moment of the clash. Good stuff. BTW I don't think the XGM installer will switch it on (it copies your standard prefs, and then makes a few changes like switching on advice, and unit shaders).

killmore - A land bridge to Rhodes is very likely to happen. Salamis is possible. I don't think I will link up any of the other islands though. Oddly enough, in my last few campaigns, the Romans have made serious attempts to capture Crete and Sicily, but haven't gone anywhere near the Greek mainland. Anyway, I think the bridge from Italy to Greece will stay until the whole Brutii/Scipii naval bug gets sorted out.

Thrace is safe though. Playing Thrace is already enough of a challenge. We are mainly talking about making it a tougher fight for the Greek Cities.

[jjca]

lowering the price on phalanx pikemen and royal pikemen helps macedon. I also started them out with a City barracks.

[jjca]

could someone send me a copy of the GCS export desc buildings please

[DimeBagHo]

jjca - I think that would make life too easy for a human playing Macedon. But it occured to me that not all of these things need to be done in the standard version of XGM. It would be relatively easy to add a "Heroic Level GCS" installer to the extras folder, which would install a descr_strat.txt (and maybe an export_descr_units.txt) tailored for a challenging GCS campaign.

[jjca]

who would download XGCS to play macedon? I guess some people do though. But the GCS is where this mod really shines to me, and that is what I base my mods of your work around. One thing i'm noticing is that the AI recruit way to many of those normal black spearmen. Can't be bothered looking up the name, but they get in the way of good battles with Macedon since they are weak and the AI is so in love with them. i'm trying to figure out a balance to make Macedon use more phalanx units.

[DimeBagHo]

jjca - Probably because Thorakitai have better stats than their phalanx units - asside from the phalanx ability itself. You could try changing their class from heavy to light infantry. I seem to remember that Macedon has a preference for heavy infantry. I'll try it myself later.

[DEMETRIOUS II]

Hey DimeBag,
I downloaded your mod last night and I must say it's great.

1. I like the map I don't care too much for larger maps or more provinces. This is good enough.
2. Did you tweak the unit mass? I fought a battle and it was chaotic. It looked like the units broke through the lines and everyone was engaged in hard fighting. Great battle feel.
3. Not sure if the Sicily-Africa land bridge is working. I tried to move the Greek diplomat from Sicily to Carthage but he wouldn't go. Maybe it's because his path is bloked?
4. The units mixture is good I like the Thorakitai and Thereuphoroi.

I made a few changes tailored to my tastes:

Increased Greek navy upkeep and elite unit upkeep. Removed peasants and also gave Macedon a better starting army with phalanx pikemen and larger army. Macedon builds a lot of levy pike armies, I removed them and added phalanx pikes with a slight upkeep decrease.

Overall this mod is great.

Cheers

[DimeBagHo]

DEMETRIOUS II - (1) Yeah, I really enjoyed playing on Mundus magnus for a while, but it does get to be a chore. I am still planning to make Mundus Magnus an option if I can get it working though. (2) I haven't touched unit mass yet, although I have tweaked some armour ratings and other things that make for better infantry combat. (3) The Africa-Sicily bridge is working OK for me. Let me know if it still looks bad to you.

Increasing upkeep for Greek naval units seems reasonable given that they get an experience boost to start with.

I now think that the best way to handle balance for the Greek factions is to use a campaign script. It will run at the start of a campaign and selectively boost the AI Greek factions by upgrading a few buildings, handing out some extra starting units, and maybe boosting some initial populations.

BTW, I watched a campaign with FOW off, just sitting in Britain, and apart from the Greek Cities all of the Greek factions got knocked off quite early. Pontus did well at first but then got crushed between Egypt and the GCS. Egypt, as usual, became a giant eastern menace. The Julii did well, the Scipii did well against Carthage and Numidia, but the Scipii and Brutii got whooped by the GCS at first, and only much later (after the reforms) started to bounce back. The GCS did not become huge but they were still putting up a good fight more than 150 turns into the game. One surprise was that Dacia got really huge.

[DimeBagHo]

Just a quick update on how the next version is comming along.

(1) The new province assignment will be: GCS gets Corinth and Athens, Macedon gets Thermon, Rebels get Syracuse. After brushing up on the history of the period I decided that giving Pergamum to Macedon was too big a departure.
(2) I got the family names working with the method suggested by jjca, so anyone who wants to will be able to play the city states as distinct families. If anyone has suggestions for what the initial leader names for each city state should be I'd like to hear them.
(3) The balancing script is working nicely, so I can add starting population, money, units, and buildings (although I can't upgrade buildings, or increase the settlement size), to AI factions without making those factions easier for human players. For the next version I plan to focus mainly on strengthening Macedon and the Seleucids so that they last a bit longer at least.

[DEMETRIOUS II]

Just a quick update on how the next version is comming along.

(1) The new province assignment will be: GCS gets Corinth and Athens, Macedon gets Thermon, Rebels get Syracuse. After brushing up on the history of the period I decided that giving Pergamum to Macedon was too big a departure.

First of all I'll say that it is great news on the new version coming up.

I believe that you should also give Thermon to the Aitolians (rebels). At that time period Thermon was part of the mighty Aitolian league. You should beef up Thermon with strong and experienced units. Historically Thermon was no pushover and it will be nice to see this in your mod and to make it challenging.

The Aetolian League was formed out of a tribalism of Aetolians, made up of small townships and rural communities, to which by about 250 covered most of central Greece north of the Gulf of Corinth.

The Aetolian league had taken possession of Delphi in 290 BC and fought off (according to Diodorus) 160,000 Gauls there in 279 BC. This collection of villages north of the Corinthian Gulf joined together for defense and plunder, increasing their votes on the Amphictyonic council from two to six in ten years.

Since then they dominated almost all of central Hellas, and that is why they had continuous conflicts with Macedon. Because of this they contacted the Romans later on to interfere in Hellas. The Aetolians had a bad name as they were feared pirates.

The council of all Aetolians assembled twice a year, and matters were voted by call. Besides this body the cities were proportional represented in the boule of 1000 people. The real decisions were made by a council of thirty, who were chosen from the boule, and the annually chosen strategos who was president of the League and commander of the army at the same time. The Aetolian League was tribal at first so that non-Aetolian cities could only be associated with the League by an isopoliteia-treaty.

Give the Macedonians more money and increase their starting armies. Also I believe Athens was under Macedonian rule at that time so if you want give them Athens but not Thermon.

Just some of my ideas.

[DimeBagHo]

DEMETRIOUS II - I've taken your advice with Thermon. Another advantage of making it rebel is that it makes a clash between Rome and Macedon right at the start less certain. I think Athens was nominally under the control of Macedon in 270 BC, but it was also the leading Greek city state. Right near the start of the game period, in 267 BC, Athens led the Greek city states in a war against Macedon (which they lost) so I am tempted to make Athens the capital of the GCS.

[jjca]

i've done drastic things in my own personal game to make it more enjoyable for me. I've basically removed all missle units (I was getting sick of seeing macedonian armies with 60% slingers...YAWN...plus chasing missle cavalry is so annoying.) I just want some good infanty/cavalry battles. I would like to add missle units but I think the AI buys too many of them, and then it's too easy to just roll over them with large infantry based units. This has made my game a blast, really, huge macedonian phalanx armies are quite fun to go against. I also removed other over bought units like war dogs and incendiary pigs. Rome attacked Syracuse today with two generals and an entire army balanced with principaes, triarii and hastati. Was quite epic I must say. All roman cities start out as Large Cities. Athens, Sparta and Corinth start out as large cities. Rhodes and Pergamon are minor cities. All of the Macedonian cities are Large to start with, and have City Barracks. My changes are just to make the game more interesting for the GCS, and to make battles more fun for myself. I'm really hoping someone makes a good Ancient Greek based mod. I thought about it and it seems to me that the major obstacles would be map size and time in between turns.

[DEMETRIOUS II]

I'm really hoping someone makes a good Ancient Greek based mod. I thought about it and it seems to me that the major obstacles would be map size and time in between turns.

There was the Age of Hellas mod but the team split up. Some members are re-doing this mod but it is not public yet. I have seen the models myself and I must tell you this is going to be one heck of a mod. They are redoing the map to include the Persian empire and Greece only. One third of the team is Greek history buffs so this mod is going to be good. They are progressing really well also.

[Zenith Darksea]

And don't forget Troy Total War of course, for all you Bronze Age fans...

[DimeBagHo]

jjca - I've been running a bunch of test campaigns to test out the balancing script, and I noticed that the Greek factions were totally on love with Thorakitai. So I have rebalanced things by reducing the size back to 40 and increasing the cost (same for east heavy infantry, but the town watch level units are still size 60). Recruitment is much more balanced now, although the Seleucids and Macadonians still won't touch levy pikemen with a 10 foot pole (can't blame them really).

DEMETRIOUS II & Zenith Darksea - One mod I was really looking forward to appears to be dead - TS-TW. It's a real shame because so much work had already been done.

[DimeBagHo]

XGM version 3.3 is done and available for download.

You can get it here.

The major changes are:
-Added two new land bridges to Rhodes and Salamis
-Added balancing script to boost AI factions
-Added sub-faction leaders for GCS
-Changed GCS and Macedon starting positions
-Added Gastraphetes
-Reduced size and increased cost of new heavy infantry units
-Minor UI changes

Balancing Script: Macedon now puts up a better fight, although in the games I watched it still succumbed eventually to the pressure from an alliance of the Brutii and the GCS (which is more-or-less historical). The Seleucids no longer get crushed by attacks from all directions. In the games I watched they usually bacame a dominant player in Asia Minor, and held up, or even expanded elsewhere.

Sub-Factions Leaders: Each of the initial Greek city states now has it's own leader and ruling family.

[jjca]

the game is so much better without missle cavalry and missle units in my opinion. The battles are alot harder. I got crushed by a macedonian army the other day that had almost all phalanx pikemen with a few greek cavalry and two generals.

[Decimus Equitius]

Your mod looks great. but I seem to be having troubles. when I start a campaign I have your Spartan units and also in custom battles, but when my city gets big enough I can only recruit the vanilla version of the Spartan Hoplites. Little Help?

[DimeBagHo]

jjca - Sounds great, but a little too drastic for XGM. I have been thinking about nerfing ranged units though. I'm also going to re-arrange recruitment a bit. I think that having peltasts at level 1 barracks has encouraged the AI to recruit them too much.

Decimus Equitius - Which version are you using? There was a problem with the recruit lines for Spartans and Thessalians a couple of versions back, but those problems should be fixed in the most recent version.

[jjca]

it's not the strength of ranged units that's the problem. THe problem is the AI over recruits them.