**** the "Hooting"-trait

**Newtothegame** · January 18, 2009, 07:03 AM

In my current Roman campaign on VH/VH which is a lot of fun I had a good general. He did not have a lots of chances to gain good military traits for I always try staying at peace with others as long as possible. Someday he won a small battle and gained the name "the victor". I was proud of him and he was by far my best general. In this campaign I try to constantly stay below the 50k gold mark to not get those nasty traits for my FMs. Things worked out fine, he was not that excellent, but good enough.

As you can guess, this man became a stupid insane, he lost most of his command stars due to some terribly negative traits. The worst one is of course "Hooting". This was not too bad at first, but it got worse and still worse and the trait maxed out. No he suffers from -3 points on command, management and influence. It totally ruined his carreer.

But well the ways of Jupiter are strange and mortals cannot understand them. So I decided to focus on an other promising man in my family. He was a good ruler at first, but then started gaining command stars, not a lot of 'em, but 4-6 is usually enough. I was just planning to let my old leader die in battle (and one of his 2 sons who inherited the trait ò.ó, the other is yet to start hooting), when I discovered that my other general, the one who should be the heir, got that damn trait, too!

I simply don't have any FMs that 1. are good commanders and 2.don't hoot!

It's a nuisance, I'd accept it if it occured every now and then. 2 out of 10 was more than enough, but 3 out of 3 guys that are well able to command in battle is too much!

I'd like to know, whether you can somehow prevent your FMs from getting the trait.

Newtothegame

**fourganger** · January 18, 2009, 07:47 AM

These things run in the family sadly...Maybe send a load of your guys to die somewhere and adopt some new ones?

**Quinn Inuit** · January 18, 2009, 08:01 AM

Jamey's new character traits will reduce the chances of those traits propagating. I think it gets really annoying, too.

**Newtothegame** · January 18, 2009, 12:12 PM

Maybe send a load of your guys to die somewhere and adopt some new ones?

I actually was looking forward to seeing my leader and a unit of cheap peltasts die fighting an outnumbering horde of Rebels, but then, the next turn, both Rebel stacks have been bribed, one by the Seleucids and one by the Ptolemies! How the heck did they suppose to use 3 contongents of light Samnite infantry that is located in central Italia?

No Rebels around to kill my leader, I fear.

Where can I get Jameys modification? It ain't savegame-compatible, I guess. Is it?

Newtothegame

**Quinn Inuit** · January 18, 2009, 02:06 PM

Eh, the AI goes crazy with the bribes sometimes, especially on higher difficulties.

I don't think Jamey's fixes have been widely released yet, but I could be wrong.

**Newtothegame** · January 19, 2009, 08:39 AM

Thanks, I guess he will know. If he ever takes a look at this little thread, he might give me an answer.

VH/VH seems still easy by the way. Well ok, I don't try to expand too quickly. It's 250 BC and I only own Italia, ?Sardinia?, Corsica and 1 provence in Sicily!

Great fun anyway.

Newtothegame

**Quinn Inuit** · January 19, 2009, 11:24 AM

Hmmm, I'm sorry VH/VH isn't more of a challenge. Are you using restrictive house rules? I find those to be most conducive to a good game.

There's a rumor that the game as easy on VH as M due to a bug, but I haven't seen any documentation of that.

**fourganger** · January 19, 2009, 01:02 PM

You're still in the early era of the game. Wait till you have full blown war with Carthage/Macedon/Seleucids. Then it gets a lot harder. I've seen the Seleucids make a coordinated ground and naval offensive. Very nasty.

**marcvs agrippa** · January 20, 2009, 04:54 AM

It gets hard when you enter theatres of Illyria, Iberia and Epirus from 229BC on.
Defending Illyrian/Epirote coastal possessions against hordes of macs or greeks, while fighting an overseas war against Iberians, Carthaginians and Gauls on the iberian peninsula will get you in trouble soon enough... Especially if you play it without retraining of units and have to provide the constant replenishment of your troops by Sea from Italy...

**Newtothegame** · January 21, 2009, 04:40 PM

Yeah, why not attack China, too? And America has yet to be romanized! ^^

I don't like waging war with every one around me. I'm taking over Sicily now and then plan to do nothing until I get tired of waiting. If I should ever get a FM that does not totally suck as a commander I might perhaps dare to think about deciding about a hypothetical invasion of Northern Africa.

When I have taken the huge cities of that area (Carthage, Thapsus, Hadrumentum, Lepcis Magna, etc.) the Carthaginians will lose most of their population and earnings.
As those main cities tend to be defended insufficiently it will be easy to take over them with one full stack legion. Get a ship near the shore and wait for a good opportunity to take your troops back to Italy in order to retrain them.
Go back whenever you want and take over a few more provinces. There won't be a lot of resistance in case a second legion is defending from a central position. Once you've got the eastern parts of North Africa you can conquer the west, too. This usually means the defeat of the Iberians that get beaten by Carthage. Their troops will take over the entire peninsula soon and fight against the Gauls.
Station one legion south of Gibraltar and the other one gets spread out to secure otherwise rioting cities. You will never again have to struggle with serious assaults on that continent.
Then I'll turn for Iberia. It's not hard to take over it with 2 new legions that you can easily afford then. Attack Gaul from Italy and from Iberia simultaneously. That's when it gets messy, because there are almost no natural borders. I admit that I've never played that far with the Romans, but I can't imagine it is that hard.
The beginning is the worst. You'll never lose a campaign, if you can secure your capital and the surrounding cities. And later on the campaign I suppose you don't fight battles manually any longer, in case you win by autofighting. Since human is more intelligent than AI you will win, it's just a question of time, I think.

That's what I assume, I don't yet know for sure. Guess you all know better, right? ^^

Newtothegame

**despot_of_rhodes** · January 22, 2009, 02:54 AM

No, playing Romans isn´t hard at all, only in case you simultaniosly are at war with all your neighbours, and even then almoust none of them can match your armies at all. In RTR vanilla there was a challenge in the first turns, since you had to survive naval invasions from Carthage, Illyria and Greeks ( i think, there were no Epirots there, right? ). But even that was more fun, because you were fighting on your homeland.

I think, there are 2 things, wich could be improved in ExRM ( those were allready discussed on this forum ):

1. If possible, to double the maintain costs of the units, while the faction is played by human.
Reasons:
a. It´s not really helpfull, to give the AI extra money, it just makes their expansion faster, their hire mercs and after a while some of the factions become superpowers, we can see those endless stacks hanging around.
b. I started a campaign on M/M as GCS, not really intending to play the game for long time, and the funny thing is: No Macedonian phalanx armadas anymore...no hoplite mercs etc. - the poor baggers started to produce skirmishers and prodromoi ( a known phenomen, when a faction doen´t have much money it starts training cheapest units ).
But, the AI stays to passive due to financial problems, and that´s what the human player should be forced to do - through doubling the maintain costs ( the doubling is just an idea, one could solve this surely other way, but it seems to me the easyest way )

2. One popular solution to stop Macs or Seleucids from producing more full stacks is to invade their main land, to exterminate their major cities etc. But how historical is this? If we wouldn´t allow the AI to get so far ( i am not quite sure, if the hard campaign difficulty only affects the aggressivenes of the AI, or if its a combination of 5k denari per turn + more aggresivnes? ). Therefore i like the idea with the "city militia" scripted in the major cities, to prevent this kind of D-Days.

**marcvs agrippa** · January 22, 2009, 06:11 AM

Originally Posted by Newtothegame

Yeah, why not attack China, too? And America has yet to be romanized! ^^

I don't like waging war with every one around me. I'm taking over Sicily now and then plan to do nothing until I get tired of waiting.

Ah okay, I assumed you play with historical expansion, that was my fault then... sorry.

My personal experience when playing with Rome in ExRM is:
Playing with historical expansion will get you in trouble from 218 on, because the two fronts war (Illyria/Epirus and Iberia) is really a mess on VH.
I found the Iberians almost always kick Carthage out of Spain and start war with the gauls. The Gauls then mostly take Osca and/or Emporiae and for historical expansion you'll have to take them both and turn south where Carthage might sometimes still hold C.Nova. An Invasion of North Africa follows as well, but only to destroy their reinforcements, not to take any land.

Normally, around 209, I am at war with at least Gaul, Iberia, Carthage and Greece. Illyria if it exists and Macedonia if it exists.
Has nothing to do with extensive warmongering, but playing historically forces you to take some cities at a certain date and depending on how things have changed in 60 years of 4tpy you almost always fight wars against 3-6 other factions.

I wouldn't change anything to ExRM for the roman campaign. The mod is designed to play the romans after the Guide and it is hard enough, especially when your supply of good generals goes rapidly down after holding 25+ regions.