Faction experience: Samnites
My compliments for the team for this superb mod!I really love this mod and wanted to contribute something from my experience playing as the Samnites, for the Samnite faction and the game as a whole. (I haven’t played other factions yet so I don’t know how finished this faction is)
What I would like to see (fixed):
1. It would be nice for further releases to give a short stickied’ manual on the PI2 website about the cultural percentage of cities / the amount of patriotism and how it affects cities (what does a general with high patriotism do / how can a general gain such a trait?) – as far as I know, my generals do not help in converting a region to my culture even though they have high patriotism, is that correct? It currently feels like a dummy variable: present, yet it does not affect anything.
2. What is the effect of building certain buildings? For example, what does the Professional Military building do? It costs a lot but what does it upgrade? The same with the Heavy smithy: it upgrades armor, but I cannot see any changes in my units and its really cheap compared to the cost of other buildings – it should be more expensive I feel like.
3. The inability to create diplomats, assassins and spies. I don’t know why one cannot create these units, but adding at least diplomats and spies would really improve the gameplay/feeling of this game. If the AI goes mad with these units (i.e. spam) it seems to me it is possible and easy to control the amount of these types of units in the game.
4 . Local resources trade menu/map:
I’d love to see a more specific resource trade menu and perhaps also on the map. It was always one of the nice things I like from the maps, knowing which regions were rich in what resources. As I feel like this is a lot of work, it doesn’t that much to me as other things do but just my 2 cents. By the way, did I mention that the map is awesome? No? Well, it’s AWESOME!!
Campaign gameplay related:
Cultural conversion:
Playing as the Samnites, it only becomes possible to convert a settlement towards your culture after your city reaches 24k population and you can upgrade to the highest tier walls. Even though my original Samnite cities have the highest population growth percentages possible and are governed by stimulating generals my biggest starting cities haven’t reached the 20k pop limit at around turn 140. Only in some conquered cities have I been able to get to the highest tier, as they already reached the 24k pop limit before I conquered them. Furthermore the conversion is slow with 2% per turn and only becomes available after the city reaches 24k pop. Most cities will not make that amount in a campaign, which isn’t bad, but I feel like some of your home cities should be able to reach these amounts as it is necessary to create the faction’s elite unit.
Question: what does the amount of culture percentage really do? I’ve had conquered cities with 100% non-Oscan culture, yet those cities were not hard to control even by an average general and some troops.
Population growth rate:
The Samnites cannot create their elite unit before their cities reach 24k pop with 50% Oscan culture [I like this restriction]. As their cities grow slowly when the player plays this faction, the player can create these elite units faster at conquered (even those starting with 0% Oscan culture) cities before the faction’s ‘home’ cities, which kinda bugs me.
I feel like the pop growth percentage should be around 0.5-1% higher compared to the starting percentages for the Samnite faction. I did my best to maximize the growth potential of my original big cities (and no plagues occurred) yet I was unable to even reach 20k before turn 140, which is late in my campaign. I feel like the player should be able to reach the elite units at around turn 150 with a recruitment rate of 1 per 3/4 turns.
Recruitment rate for newly conquered cities:
For towns that have a high enough percentage necessary to create your faction’s units, the initial recruitment is too high and available too fast for the player. It should be lower and slower, first of all for historical accuracy (I don’t feel like it was possible to create new units that fast after you just conquered a town ) and secondly for gameplay reasons (in order to stop from blitzing). For example, in my Samnite campaign I conquered Aquilonia and could immediately built 3 heavy infantry, 4 skirmishers and 3 spearman along with 1 slinger and 1 generic type skirmisher unit.
Missing skins from other factions units:
Apulian tribes: Lucanian mountain hunters, lucanian hill warriors. More will come once deeper into the campaign.
Recruitment cost of some units:
Samnite Skirmishers recruitment and upkeep costs are equal to spearman costs even though stats are widely different. This could be improved, it shouldn’t be the same in my opinion. Besides that, I like recruitment and upkeep costs of all other units.
Limited building tree:
It’s quite limited for the Samnites. It’s not a big deal, but I’d like to see some extra temples or just some general happiness/law improvement buildings.
What I don’t like:
Victory conditions for other factions are relevant during your campaign. In my Samnite campaign I wiped out the Lucanians after which the Brettians (!) won the campaign (I could still play on, but it’s less fun now). The victory conditions for other factions should be irrelevant during your campaign because it creates boundaries to where and whom you can conquer. If I had known that I would perhaps not have attacked them in the first place, yet it also bothers me that I could possibly have to protect them from being wiped out in order not to let another faction win.
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