Suggestions and requests

[Zarax]

You need to revise your strategic skills in XC, this is not a game where you can win in VH/VH unless you're an absolute tactical genius.
Tactical tip: german units rely on scare tactics, for which bersekers and night riders are your best friend.
Against gauls you should rely on their own AOR units as until the reform your axemen are at a slight disadvantage against longsword.

[Ull The Skull Collector]

Well it's not so much a question of tactics anymore when my armies kept getting raked and every turn I'd have 4 of my settlements besieged at the same time and be at 5:1 odds almost every time coupled with the super alliance that really, really hated me :/ I'd destroy one army only to have another one challenge me the next turn from a different faction.

[Zarax]

Turn AI bonuses off and play on M, there are much less stacks around in XC.

[Andalus]

EDIT: the good news is that I discovered it can be done, the bad one is that I can't do it as I'm not a modeler...

Hot damn. Let's find a modeler asap, eh?

Just out of curiosity, historically, how big were the most common rams for attacking walls directly? Just to get a sense of scale. Half as tall as the walls sounds about right, but, I'm just guessing.

The Assyrians, back in the day, had some enormous siege rams:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...tering_ram.jpg

These siege tower rams in one form or another continued to be used for some centuries. In the wars between Carthage and the Sicilian cities, the Carthaginian attackers were known to have used such wall breaking siege towers. But I imagine that is a rather impractical bulk for a ram, which is maybe why they shrunk in later ages. Developing technology does tend to get smaller, not larger. The thing about rams, though, is that if they are too small, then they are at risk of being crush by the falling wall. In most cases, particularly with palisade type walls, the forward momentum of the ram would push the wall in the opposite direction, but if you have a small ram hammering away at the base of a stone wall, debris from the top WILL fall on you, so you want to be sure of a good shelter. It is ideal to be ramming as close to the centre of a wall as possible, so the height is quite important there.

[Zarax]

Finding a modeler is much easier said than done
In our case we would limit ram use to the smaller stone walls as we cannot really mod the siege engines.

[Andalus]

Finding a modeler is much easier said than done

Quite so.

[Zarax]

BTW, are you the same Andalus as RTWH?

[Andalus]

Indeed I am.

[Anakarsis]

The Skull collector has a poimt that has worried me even whe first played XGM. The Abscence of the Roman expansion. I though that this is caused by the reduction of Rome to one faction, but i found some mods that have the same problem and they kept the 3-faction system. There is not a way in wich Rome as AI could blietzkrieg as a single Roman faction does in Vanilla, at least? In Vanilla or in "light modification" mods one can count on that the expansion of Rome shoul weakens one´s enemies, apart from being a threat. This was pretty true historically. There is not a way to reflect this?

[Zarax]

In theory Rome should have an easier time than other factions as they get cost effective infantry.
In practice they need something to push them on conquering Italy, I'm thinking to set the situation as historically should be, allied with Carthage against IGCS.

[Shadow_LT]

I think that javelins should be nerfed in XC, I ran a test and regular greek peltasts killed 50 spartans ( I play on large, used them behind the back of Spartans, who where held in place by hoplites, peltasts used all their ammo.).

AP attribute should be only left to heavy javelins and pila, as they were heavy enough to penetrate armor and a soldier could have carried only 2-3 of them at the time. And regular javelins weren't heavy enough to penetrate breastplates and chain mail.

So my suggestion is to remove AP from regular javelins and give it to pila and heavy javelins. Regular javelin attack could raised by 1, but as exp. bonuses and weapon upgrades( do they apply to missile weapons?) are not rare in XC, I think their attack should be left as it is.

Heavy javelins and pila attack with AP atribute should be 7-9. Ammo number is fine, in my opinion( 8 for light skirmishers and 6 for more heavy ones). Skirmisher cavalry should have around 12 or maybe more.

And I noticed that Thracian thorakitai have regular javelins and they only have 3 of them, all other thorakitai have 3 heavy javelins. Also archer auxilia have only 5 missile attack(should have 7 as their syrian counterparts.) Finally, indian longbowmen have 9 missile attack, i think it should be 7 as they weren't specially trained and only had powerful bows.

[Zarax]

I think I did some missile rebalance already, the next release should have it.
Archer auxilia is nerfed because they don't have an AOR and that would make the romans overpowered.

[Shadow_LT]

Thanks for explaining it.
But the indians ?

[Zarax]

They had pretty serious longbows and heavy arrows but if you find them overpowered I might nerf that too...

[Shadow_LT]

Yes, their longbows were powerful, but I don't think they deserve 9, 8 is more suitable for them, they still will be better than other elite archers attack-wise, but not by much as indians weren't specially trained.

Also, parthians don't have their regular archers yet.

[Zarax]

I may have fixed that already, will need to check.
I also need to work on the parthian roster but for now the focus is on getting out the next release, with time rosters will be refined though...

[Shadow_LT]

When are you planing to release next XC release ? Will it be full version or gamma version ?

[Zarax]

Gamma... Although it could be a 4.0a.

[Shadow_LT]

Also, what is the difference between javelin and heavy_javelin ? And between arrow and arrow_elite ? Does the RTW engine treat them differently ?

[Zarax]

Yes, range and accuracy are different for those.