First impressions of 4.0.11 as Romans

**Germanicus75** · June 16, 2006, 08:25 AM

Hey guys,

I solved the problem of running 3_Final and 4.0.11 together by installing the latter on a copy of 1.5.

I just played two games as the Romans on 4.0.11 and I'd like to offer up a few first impressions :-)

- Like the Mundus Magna map - looks great. Only problem is it's harder to see the faction boundaries/colours on the campaign screen mini-map

- Rome Rebels - could the name be changed to something that seems (to my non-expert-historian ears) more probable, since these rebels are based far from Rome/Latin area. Maybe "south Italic Rebels". Someone with more knowledge of Roman history should have an idea?

- If possible, please change the banners/icons for the Rome Rebels and Independent Greek States. It's a bit unnerving seeing the Scippi and Brutii colours/banners/icons for these new factions. Among all the various mods out there ought to be some appropriate ones you can borrow?

- At least please change the green Brutii green colour to something that better matches the beige/red/black colours of the Greeks on the battlefield?

- My general referred to them as the Brutii in his opening battle speech, but I guess there's nothing to do about this

- It's been ages since I let the AI siege me - normally I attack on the same turn as it lays siege. I can see in 1.5 that the AI is better but still is somewhat sucky, as it let units stand idle in front of my gate, brings its elephants up to my gate to get peppered with missles, allows units to stand idle outside my walls even after it has breached them, can only use one or two siege methods/attack points at a time, cannot accommodate a combined attack, made a hole in my walls or opened the gate but then proceeded to still bring up the siege towers!!
I know you can't change these, I just wanted to vent :-) I'll vent these on the official forum too, although I guess they've probably heard them before.

Anyway, I'm really impressed with the difficulty. As Rome, playing both medium and easy campaigns, I was attacked on four sides - regular rebs, Rome Rebels, Gauls and Independent Greek City States (Phyrrus etc.). In the end, I just could not hold on long enough and deal with the attacks from several directions to get my economy boosted, protected and start building decent troops. Phyrrus nearly made it easier for me by - as their best general - walking around the map for a while completely alone! (Still another 1.5 fault). I attacked him twice with a full stack but somehow he still got away. He routed both times, although I don't understand how he could do that as he'd used up all his movement points on the campaign map?

So I'll have to revise my Roman strategy and start again.

Please remember these are just my initial impressions of one faction having played for about 2 hours.

Keep up the great work! :-)

Cheers, Germanicus 91

**Zarax** · June 16, 2006, 12:54 PM

Yep, XGM4 is not a walk in the park for many factions, try Carthage and you will see what I mean...

**Kara Kolyo** · June 16, 2006, 01:28 PM

i tried the ptolemies with the loyalty add-on and got creamed by combined Seleucid+Carthage attack. still hear the screams of my poppulation beiing massacred. tomorrow probably will finaly have couple of hours to continue testing, but surely 4.11 is tough

**Zarax** · June 16, 2006, 01:33 PM

Well, it's still better than having ptolemies, romans, iberians, gauls and numidians on your "poor" Carthaginian empire, especially post marius...
We definitely need a way to divert carthage and egypt attention from each other in the game, it is the single biggest unbalancing factor you can find...

**Zorn** · June 16, 2006, 05:41 PM

Ah, impressions.
The difficulty has improved significantly. In Rome vanilla I could pack abandon my starting area with a barbarian faction, move to egypt or italy and still win on vh/vh.
So, I started my new campaign as pontus (vh/m) - and got beaten by the seleucids badly.
Restart, as egypts. Egypt is always a walk in the park. When both carthage and the sels startet to throw full stacks at me every single turn, I quit again.
Download 4.11, cool Pontus strengthened, try again. Was doing well, but finally my cities kept being sieged, trade cut short, I ran out of money and lost again.

At the moment I tried again as egypt, being much more agressive towards the seleucides, taking palestine from them very early. While money isn`t a great problem now, thigs are getting hot as the cartagians attacked me - with full stacks pf course. The Seleucides didn`t seem to mind that they lost their most profitable regions, they keep coming. Very intense.

The seleucidian emire is a monster in this mod. In every game it doubles it`s provinces very fast, despite taking heavy casualities on my front. Never seen a AI faction so efficient. If the capture rome victory condition would be removed, it might very well be possible for them to win the game - imagine!

Simply an awesome mod.

**Germanicus75** · June 18, 2006, 08:03 AM

Hi guys,

Thanks for your comments. I agree, this mod is fantastic.

Got three more questions from 4.0.11.

1) Cav charging into back of retreating units - I've noticed my cav will charge to the unit until they literally get the horses' noses on the backs of the men and then the charge seems to peter out. Then I need to wait or order them to charge again before they ram into the unit, and then it's not as hard as I'd like. I remember playing some version of RTW where cav really *smacked* into units like a sledgehammer. Is there some way to regain this feature?

2) As the Germans, I've been fighting the Gauls a lot but so far I've not seen the classic war cry + charge with entire army into the enemy's lines barbarian type battle scenario.

3) As the Germans, I find guaranteed every game the Macs take over all Greece and the Balkans and start to motor up into Eastern Europe. Is there a way to tweak the campaign AI to make the Macs slightly less aggressive and their behaviour therefore slightly more variable?

Nothing to do with XGM of course, but I'm also wondering why in 1.5 you cannot merge your units before a battle when attacked? You could in 1.2. It's not realistic to expect that you wouldn't have time to merge your units before engaging the enemy. Anyone know?

Thanks for your help! :-)

Cheers, Germanicus91

**Juus** · June 18, 2006, 09:18 AM

Originally Posted by Zorn

The seleucidian emire is a monster in this mod. In every game it doubles it`s provinces very fast, despite taking heavy casualities on my front. Never seen a AI faction so efficient. If the capture rome victory condition would be removed, it might very well be possible for them to win the game - imagine!

The Seleucids are the new Egypt.

**Zarax** · June 18, 2006, 09:24 AM

Err, in most of my games they still get owned pretty bad by the eggies, although now i'm seeing an almost MTW-like randomness, so that in my current game as GCS I'm fighting for survival against... Carthage, which took most of europe (except Italy, I guess the romans are strong enough to defend themselves), while the eggies are wasting thousand troops against my golden garrisoned Pergamum...
I guess I will have to play battles to bring safety back, on autocalc my best stacks are useful only for a couple turns, all I produce goes to replace losses...

**Hippias** · June 19, 2006, 06:40 AM

Originally Posted by Germanicus91

- Rome Rebels - could the name be changed to something that seems (to my non-expert-historian ears) more probable, since these rebels are based far from Rome/Latin area. Maybe "south Italic Rebels". Someone with more knowledge of Roman history should have an idea?

Anyway, I'm really impressed with the difficulty. As Rome, playing both medium and easy campaigns, I was attacked on four sides - regular rebs, Rome Rebels, Gauls and Independent Greek City States (Phyrrus etc.). In the end, I just could not hold on long enough and deal with the attacks from several directions to get my economy boosted, protected and start building decent troops.

So I'll have to revise my Roman strategy and start again.

Please remember these are just my initial impressions of one faction having played for about 2 hours.

Keep up the great work! :-)

Cheers, Germanicus 91

Probably hardcoded, but might it be an idea to start with the Roman Rebel faction called 'Italic Cities' or something similar, with no Loyalty in the main Roman faction.

Could Loyalty be scripted in to only appear for the Romans after Marius, where the faction name could be changed to 'Republican Rebels' or 'Populares'?

**DimeBagHo** · June 19, 2006, 07:17 AM

Roman Rebels: At game start they are supposed to represent various Italic peoples that were still independent. But they can re-emerge later in the game, anywhere on the map where a Roman city rebels, so they need to have a more generic name than Italic Cities or anything like that. Same goes for the Seleucid rebels, who will represent the Greco-Bactrians at game start, but could re-emerge in other places.

Unfortunately, given the current constraints of the loyalty system, the rebel factions have to be present at the start of the campaign, and loyalty has to be "on" from the start.

Charging cavalry: The problem with cavalry stalling before contact is hard-coded, but it is possible to give cavalry charges a higher impact by changing the masses of the mounts. I might play around with that for the next release.

Seleucids: They are quite a tough nut to crack now. They should be a little easier to beat after the Seleucid rebels are added, because they wwill have more competition on their eastern border.

**Zarax** · June 19, 2006, 07:58 AM

For you seleucid fans I think there will be a few new units in the next releases, alexander introduced some variety in eastern medium-heavy cav and they can be quite nice to be used....

**Juus** · July 14, 2006, 07:34 PM

Could you make Macedon and the Greek Cities allies from the start?

**Custos** · July 16, 2006, 11:37 AM

Originally Posted by Zarax

Err, in most of my games they still get owned pretty bad by the eggies, although now i'm seeing an almost MTW-like randomness, so that in my current game as GCS I'm fighting for survival against... Carthage, which took most of europe (except Italy, I guess the romans are strong enough to defend themselves), while the eggies are wasting thousand troops against my golden garrisoned Pergamum...
I guess I will have to play battles to bring safety back, on autocalc my best stacks are useful only for a couple turns, all I produce goes to replace losses...

Wow! in my campaign with 4.0.10 the 'eggies' are allied with the selecuids :hmmm: bizzare reallly. I play as the greeks and i have the eggies/selecuids and rome fighting me. Its been really hard but my economy is solid and the aspect of my empire keeping me alive! Damn Roman armies are hard!