Troop training

**boss1522** · February 05, 2006, 03:43 PM

Wouldn't it be more historicaly accurate if factions could train troops they were able to at the time of eb start. Like Makedon being able to train phezetairoi. or the koinon hellenon being able to train more than levies. Makedon had been training phezetairoi for a while before eb start date. this applies to all factions. why should the player or the ai have to wait so long to train there standard troops.

**Teleklos Archelaou** · February 05, 2006, 03:53 PM

It's a question that is a good one, but one that does cause concerns for gameplay. we haven't fully figured out how much we are willing to sacrifice here to have it be really accurate and it's an ongoing topic of discussion. It's not as much fun for most folks I think if they don't have to build anything like higher level barracks, or other buildings.

**boss1522** · February 05, 2006, 03:55 PM

Sorry if I sounded like I was complaining. I wasnt I love EB. I just was wondering, thanks for the reply.

**Hobo** · February 06, 2006, 07:55 AM

I recon it'd be a good idea to have a single city for each faction, the capitol say, with pretty advanced recruitment {mabye have one level left to build}, but this single city'd be far, far ahead of all others. The RTR way seems good, but limiting it a bit more would be good, so it wouldn't be levy based or all max. units, allowing alot of progress {as you'd be limited to one city for a long time for re-training + the cost of adv. units}

Just a thought

**Chuffy** · February 07, 2006, 08:56 AM

EB does suffer from the same problems from vanilla in this department. For example in vanilla Makedon had extremely small cities, some with no barracks....how did Alexander conquer Persia with no manpower or facilities!?

However in EB this is offset by the Makedons ability to blitz the Greeks early in the game.

**Holger Danske** · February 13, 2006, 05:27 AM

I vote for Hobo's proposal.. It seems logical and fair towards the gameplay.. Your capitol should have to ability to train the mainstay of your armies but not every unit from the start.. And some factions should also have one or two armies to start with (Seleucid Empire, Egypt etc...) like in RTR.

**Hobo** · February 13, 2006, 08:14 AM

Originally Posted by Holger Danske

I vote for Hobo's proposal.. It seems logical and fair towards the gameplay.. Your capitol should have to ability to train the mainstay of your armies but not every unit from the start.. And some factions should also have one or two armies to start with (Seleucid Empire, Egypt etc...) like in RTR.

Thanks, I feel bad for ripping into you in that 'Bomb Iran' Thread now

**Leão magno** · April 05, 2006, 05:41 PM

Originally Posted by Hobo

Thanks, I feel bad for ripping into you in that 'Bomb Iran' Thread now

Thus, Capitol must have a grown population since it was the main citie and, as far as gameplaying, this would allow the formation of a core army but not a huge army in few time

way to go Hood

**Dooz** · April 05, 2006, 06:17 PM

Hey, that one city idea sounds pretty solid. Any thoughts on this by EB members? Any reasons it wouldn't be a good idea?

**QwertyMIDX** · April 05, 2006, 07:59 PM

I've been pushing for a more devloped start, although not using a "one well devloped city model." I'd rather have cities be closer to their actual development, although that might skew the game too much toward the "civilized" factions.

**Dooz** · April 05, 2006, 09:59 PM

What are the reasons against using one well developed city?

**QwertyMIDX** · April 06, 2006, 02:04 AM

Nothing, other than its not particularly historically accurate, gameplay wise its probably a better idea. Capua was almost as big as Rome in the 3rd century for example, and it would weird to shortchange cities like Sardis, Memphis, Athens, Gades, Sidon, Seleukia, etc for some rule about 1 (or 2) devloped cities per faction.

**Dooz** · April 06, 2006, 03:31 AM

Hmm... well if it's historical accuracy that's the problem, the current system has it's flaws too. And in the big picture, if the decision for the current system has been made for gameplay's sake (keeping the innacuracy in mind), it'd be better to go with a different kind of innacuracy for better gameplay's sake wouldn't it? Both ways aren't ideal, so if one offers a big advantage, why not take it?

**QwertyMIDX** · April 06, 2006, 10:59 AM

I agree completely. What I just proposed was what "I've been pushing for" not an offical EB stance. This is just me speaking as an individual, not speaking for EB. I think many cities are far too underdevloped at that start and that it should be addressed, not a single phalangite can be trained in the entire Seleukid Empire at the start of the game, I think that's crazy. I'm not sure how EB as a whole will choose to address this issue though, a one city model may well be how things turn out.

**Shaggy1973** · April 06, 2006, 02:31 PM

Why not have the civilised people start with cities - and balance that by having the barbarians limited to say large_towns. However, they should have access to all their buildings within the large town level, that way they can recruit their top level troops in smaller settlements as was the case. Now they will suffer from money, so make their units cheaper to recruit and upkeep.

they wont be bale to afford mercs as much, but did they really compose their armies of them?

finally it may be necessary to block the bonuses of many higher level buildings. so if they take a city over with a dockyard, dockyard gives the barbarians the equivalent bonuses of the port.... same with higher level markets etc.

with regards to law, again limit their bonuses. that way barbarian armies will enter large cities - say 20,000 or so. they will if they occupy it they will not be bale to maintain control and will leave again after 2 or 3 turns (be booted out after revolt). this will mirror the way barbarians tended to sack settlements rather than occupy them. only after repeated attempts at capture and the population being reduced significantly will they manage to take a settlement.

if you balance it so that barbarian settlements never get above say 7-8000 people (through farm level reductions and farming improvement limits) their empires will remian filled with small level large_towns which they can manage. it will have the side effect of meaning barbarians cant really take huge swathes of civilised lands easily. the trick would also be to make it so that civilised peoples cant really take barbarian lands either.

then you can have all factions with top level troops from the start - so armies will be varied. I too think the traditional rts style "being drip fed higher units over time" approach is tired and not really applicable to RTW.

good luck anyways

**DEMETRIOUS II** · April 06, 2006, 03:15 PM

Originally Posted by Shaggy1973

Why not have the civilised people start with cities - and balance that by having the barbarians limited to say large_towns. However, they should have access to all their buildings within the large town level, that way they can recruit their top level troops in smaller settlements as was the case. Now they will suffer from money, so make their units cheaper to recruit and upkeep.

with regards to law, again limit their bonuses. that way barbarian armies will enter large cities - say 20,000 or so. they will if they occupy it they will not be bale to maintain control and will leave again after 2 or 3 turns (be booted out after revolt). this will mirror the way barbarians tended to sack settlements rather than occupy them. only after repeated attempts at capture and the population being reduced significantly will they manage to take a settlement.

then you can have all factions with top level troops from the start - so armies will be varied. I too think the traditional rts style "being drip fed higher units over time" approach is tired and not really applicable to RTW.

good luck anyways

Good points.
It is too easy just occupying a civilized settlement and holding it as a barbarian faction. It should be made harder.

I always hated how you have to build barracks etc to get better units. Not very realistic. It would be better if you built facilities to upgrade your units with armour, weapons etc.

**Dooz** · April 06, 2006, 05:45 PM

Originally Posted by QwertyMIDX

I agree completely. What I just proposed was what "I've been pushing for" not an offical EB stance. This is just me speaking as an individual, not speaking for EB. I think many cities are far too underdevloped at that start and that it should be addressed, not a single phalangite can be trained in the entire Seleukid Empire at the start of the game, I think that's crazy. I'm not sure how EB as a whole will choose to address this issue though, a one city model may well be how things turn out.

Indeed, I hope so. If for some odd reason it doesn't turn out that way, and since you want it that way yourself, think you can make a mini-mod type thing basically changing the necessary texts I guess to make this idea work? If it's not an official part of EB, it can be a popular option for those who want it.

**Khelvan** · April 06, 2006, 08:32 PM

Originally Posted by Shaggy1973

then you can have all factions with top level troops from the start - so armies will be varied. I too think the traditional rts style "being drip fed higher units over time" approach is tired and not really applicable to RTW.

I agree, and so does the team, which is exactly why we chose not to take this approach. The MIC represents infrastructure, not a drip-fed RTS approach. There is no real way for us to be able to represent recruitment in any meaningful way. Though of course suggestions are welcome, I can't personally see a way to do unit recruitment that makes more sense than the infrastructure approach.

**Shaggy1973** · April 07, 2006, 02:41 AM

No I like the recruitment system as it is, but all civilisations should be able to recruit the units that they had access to in 272BC from the start in their homelands, with a select few being region specific or city size limited. Large cities should start large and developed. Some factions should start with high incomes, but be limted in other ways. Perhaps with the MICs you could make barrack improvements equivalent to training. That means that building a higher level barracks does not give different troops, but better quality troops. That way if you had a small faction with only two provinces neighboring a large faction with many, they would have a fighting chance. If their two homeland provinces were churning out their best troops with high experience, and the troops the large empire churned out on its empire's extremities were of lesser experience, the smaller faction could withstand the larger much better.

as the ai builds a unit in each province each round, much of their armies would be created from the lower quality provincial areas. combine that with the moral penalites which the trait system gives out for armies in enemy territory and you have a much more stable situation on the campaign map too.

for this to work, barrack improvements would have to be given very long build times and be prohibitively expensive. perhaps even not be buildable at all. perhaps have them as uniques which give bonuses only to the faction whose homeland it is?

eg latium. rome_homeland_unique capabilities recruit_exp_bonus +3 requires faction roman

then the player could rolepay having senate armies and regular troops etc