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Thread: Roma Invicta - Update 3 Available 16/09/2013

  1. #21

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    Is it at all possible to fix the bug where Artillery ships won't fire unless fired manually?

  2. #22

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    Quote Originally Posted by THE_ANGRY_GAMER View Post
    Is it at all possible to fix the bug where Artillery ships won't fire unless fired manually?
    Sadly, that's very much out of my control. If it's bugged so that they can't fire unless you take direct control, then that's almost certainly an engine bug, which only CA can fix, when they get their bloody act together!


    Re: Oathsworn - I've not encountered many of these, and my super-veteran legionaries have always slaughtered them so far. I'll take a look soon, but I don't want to start nerfing all of Rome's enemies
    Last edited by Friar Chris; September 12, 2013 at 02:53 PM.


    Scientia potentia est. Eam bene tege!

  3. #23

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    Quote Originally Posted by Friar Chris View Post
    Sadly, that's very much out of my control. If it's bugged so that they can't fire unless you take direct control, then that's almost certainly an engine bug, which only CA can fix, when they get their bloody act together!


    Re: Oathsworn - I've not encountered many of these, and my super-veteran legionaries have always slaughtered them so far. I'll take a look soon, but I don't want to start nerfing all of Rome's enemies
    Haha, no don't get me wrong. I want tough units, especially since Rome is OP as it is. I was just making more of a general statement as to some of the ludicrous staying power of some units -- like the war elephant general's unit. That *** can solo whole armies.

  4. #24
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    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    These changes sound great. My only concern about the siege changes is that the AI (at least in my experience) never builds siege engines and often goes for the flaming torches style of attack. Wouldn't the changes to torches make them even more of sitting ducks than they usually are during sieges? Is there a chance to completely remove the torches altogether?


  5. #25

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    I played with your mod some tonight. I like the balance you've struck on the campaign side. I'm not seeing disease ravaging things all the time and I'm not swimming in cash or food, but with careful management and a little expansion there is enough. The combat side feels good too, but I haven't had enough fighting to really know how well things are doing there just yet. The fights last longer, maneuver and set up take more thought and have a greater impact and the routing is delayed. It is this last part I'm not 100% sold on yet. I have seen some fairly low level units fight well beyond the point I expected them to rout given the situation I put them in. All in all this is a great start and a wonderful alternative to some of the other mods out there right now.

  6. #26

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    what about fix for the testudo?

  7. #27

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    Sounds great but I can't download, could you consider hosting offsite until things settle down on these forums?

    You may want to consider nerfing the generic tribal bonus that african/arabic of 800 cash for their cities too, I did so in my personal mod and carthage lasted until turn 50 before being killed....by an iberian tribe...but hey I at least got one good fight out of them playing rome =p

  8. #28

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    Quote Originally Posted by Hellbent View Post
    These changes sound great. My only concern about the siege changes is that the AI (at least in my experience) never builds siege engines and often goes for the flaming torches style of attack. Wouldn't the changes to torches make them even more of sitting ducks than they usually are during sieges? Is there a chance to completely remove the torches altogether?
    Sadly, I can't remove them altogether, as the game right now would still let you 'attack' a walled city on the first turn of a siege. Siege AI is also largely if not completely battle AI, which we have no access to.

    CA need to remove this abomination from the game themselves, unfortunately - this is a stop-gap measure, and they need to fix their damned AI. The support for the removal of torches that nears 90% of people you see talking about it in threads on their boards, and they've got a lot of feedback about how it completely spoils proper siege gameplay.



    Quote Originally Posted by willyum3249 View Post
    what about fix for the testudo?
    I'd love to, but as far as I can discern, the code that's broken is either not currently accessible to the PFM/in its schema, or is something hardcoded into the engine that I can fix.

    Once again it's on CA to fix it, and the rumour is they're pushing today's patch back to Monday, which is bloody ridiculous if you ask me.



    Quote Originally Posted by Dekent View Post
    Sounds great but I can't download, could you consider hosting offsite until things settle down on these forums?

    You may want to consider nerfing the generic tribal bonus that african/arabic of 800 cash for their cities too, I did so in my personal mod and carthage lasted until turn 50 before being killed....by an iberian tribe...but hey I at least got one good fight out of them playing rome =p

    I'll try find some solution; I can probably host it on my DropBox at the very least. These boards have been absolutely awful recently, right now at 8AM it seems a bit better but anytime after mid-day can take quite literally over a minute to load a page, and frequently just times out.


    If I knew where that bonus income was controlled, I'd scrap all bonus money for the next build. Another poor plastering-over by CA with untested unintended consequences, I suspect. As it stands, I can't find the part of the database it's set in.


    Quote Originally Posted by Disarray View Post
    I played with your mod some tonight. I like the balance you've struck on the campaign side. I'm not seeing disease ravaging things all the time and I'm not swimming in cash or food, but with careful management and a little expansion there is enough. The combat side feels good too, but I haven't had enough fighting to really know how well things are doing there just yet. The fights last longer, maneuver and set up take more thought and have a greater impact and the routing is delayed. It is this last part I'm not 100% sold on yet. I have seen some fairly low level units fight well beyond the point I expected them to rout given the situation I put them in. All in all this is a great start and a wonderful alternative to some of the other mods out there right now.

    Hmm, poor quality units shouldn't be too bad, but I'll have a look. What units have you had problems with? The next build should generally slow combat down by a little bit, so I'd like to get any problems with skirmishers and levy units dealt with early.



    Re: food - the next release ever so slightly eases you up on the food; but I've done it in a way that should preserve much of the basic challenge: where your buildings get upgraded to their first tier that consumes 2 food now, they all still consume the same 2 food; so building up provinces with a lot of these buildings still sets you back just the same. What's changing is that every additional stage after that has about 25-30% less food consumption, so it just doesn't inflate quite so badly:

    Vanilla - New
    2 - 2
    4 - 3
    6 - 4
    12 - 9
    14 - 10


    Testing suggests this doesn't really free up much food in practice, but does mean you can build your more advanced buildings without having to have multiple farms to support just one building now when you start hitting higher levels.
    Last edited by Friar Chris; September 13, 2013 at 03:04 AM.


    Scientia potentia est. Eam bene tege!

  9. #29

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    Sounds like an excellent set of modifications!! Will be DL tonight!
    A few requests though if possible, I appreciate that these changes are your preference...
    Would you be able to integrate defensive testudo ability for Roman citizen troops?
    Would you be able to integrate something like Ahigas' "Old school Javelins" changes? (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...in-armed-units)
    Keep up the great work, you guys will save this game!

  10. #30

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    Quote Originally Posted by Silverhaze View Post
    Sounds like an excellent set of modifications!! Will be DL tonight!
    A few requests though if possible, I appreciate that these changes are your preference...
    Would you be able to integrate defensive testudo ability for Roman citizen troops?
    Would you be able to integrate something like Ahigas' "Old school Javelins" changes? (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...in-armed-units)
    Keep up the great work, you guys will save this game!
    As far as I understand, the Old School Javelins setup has some limitations due to it being improvised since CA removed it, so I don't want to start implementing them as a full feature, and hopefully it will eventually be patched.


    As far as I know, most Roman melee infantry have a testudo of some sort. The difference between 'offensive' and 'defensive' isn't clear, but neither work currently anyway, we're waiting on CA to fix them, and they've pushed the damned patch back to next Monday.


    Scientia potentia est. Eam bene tege!

  11. #31

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    I know it isn't possible yet. But I had a thought last night about another needed fix.

    Flaming arrows. Ancient infantry didn't carry zippo lighters and use flaming arrows all the time. Its pure spectacle, annoying, and not accurate -- and affected troops simply spontaneously combust. Both the player and AI shouldn't be able to use it all the time. It should be tied to research--and far up at that.

  12. #32

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    Also, I was quite bothered by being able to recruit Triarii and Principes so easily. This game doesn't really reward you for researching infantry -- you simply move from Hastati to loads of different troops with each tier slightly higher than the last. It kind of kills the whole "Marian reform" aspect of Rome and how that was such a dramatic enhancement for the Roman army.

    Now, you just spend a few turns at the start of a campaign researching troops and BOOM... Military dominance.

  13. #33

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    Quote Originally Posted by Reichmar12 View Post
    Also, I was quite bothered by being able to recruit Triarii and Principes so easily. This game doesn't really reward you for researching infantry -- you simply move from Hastati to loads of different troops with each tier slightly higher than the last. It kind of kills the whole "Marian reform" aspect of Rome and how that was such a dramatic enhancement for the Roman army.

    Now, you just spend a few turns at the start of a campaign researching troops and BOOM... Military dominance.
    I will be looking into making them a bit harder to get your hands on; but I can't stick them onto Cohort barracks as they'd never be available as legionaries would turn up. As such, expect a few things to be tested and be coming at some point:

    • Capped numbers of each - generously, but capped nonetheless: probably in the region of 25-35 Principes and 10-20 Triarii. Rationale is that both of these units represent veteran soldiers with war experience and more wealth, and there's only so many of these alive and available at any given time.

    • Increased upkeep. I think a lot of Roman infantry will get this; simply because they are so damned badass. Auxilia and Socii and the like will not get any upkeep increases, encouraging players to diversify forces more.



    I do feel that currently it's a bit too easy to upkeep legions of professional Roman troops. I don't want to hit this to the extent that your treasury is impossible to balance, but I do want to price them more fairly for their really quite spectacular combat capabilities. Both these things (upkeep and caps) - as with everything with Invicta - I will try and keep moderate and not exaggerated in scale.


    In other news, some recent changes:


    • Combat slowed a fraction more; but this time not through morale. A (slightly less-than) 10% reduction in the base hit chance of all melee attacks has been implemented, which practically simply means that the rate of combat losses themselves has been slightly reduced. The beauty of this is once again that the balance of power remains untouched, but also that missile weapons and cavalry charges (and infantry charges, to an extent) are mostly unaffected, so tactical usage of assets isn't punished, but big mobs of melee aren't as quick-fire things.

    • AP value of slingers will be marginally decreased; these things were really hurting entire formations in short time in my tests; notably some heavily armoured, high-cost units. This is fine in principle, but it was deemed to be a bit too good.

    • Increased melee defence for most Greek-culture hoplites and pikes, and mild increased melee defence for Thureos spears too. This is in response to really quite poor performance of these units in phalanx. Their melee attack and damage remains untouched; and their morale is just the same as previously, however they won't die quite as quickly, particularly to direct frontal attacks - once again, the beauty is that flanking cavalry will still inflict horrible casualties regardless of this change, whilst their head-on defence when in formation will be buffed.



    I'll be posting a DropBox link for a brand new test version soon, which will have everything I've talked about since the first update, which is quite a lot - including the campaign AI changes, battle morale and effects changes and other content too.


    Scientia potentia est. Eam bene tege!

  14. #34

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    effect_bundles_to_effects_junctions_tables is where faction bonuses are kept, including the 800 gold bonus that african/arabian/britania tribes get

  15. #35

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    Limiting the First Cohorts is really senseless. Instead increase their upkeep. I'd also like to see buffs to scorpions, ballistae and polybolos' accuarcy, penetration and battery size, since they are worthless at the moment. I also think heavy onagers should do more damage to walls, so I don't need several units of them to knock down a few portions of wall. The food system is still almost as silly as the vanilla one since you literally can't build much else in villages other than ranches and farms. Since the provincial capital is used to construct industry, an aqueduct and a culture building, where do you put your barracks and temples? You have to basically have one province (Italia) dedicated to recruiting all of your armies. You should also look into combining some of the training buildings for this reason.

    Your sprinting fatigue change is also counterproductive, as the AI always sprints and thus tires out all of its troops before you engage, making them easier to kill and rout. Transport ships should also not be capable of ramming and should sink from one or two rams. They should only be allowed to board an enemy ship, but even that should be harder because they need to be slowed down still.

  16. #36

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    Like I said, it is probably too early to tell for sure on the lower level units not routing. It could be I still haven't adjusted to the longer battle times. I'll play a bit more and see how things shake out. The units that I was seeing stay stuck in were lower level Greek and Macedonian spear militia and some lower level hoplites. I'll do some comparison fights and see how things work out and let you know.

  17. #37

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    Quote Originally Posted by lollaaja View Post
    Limiting the First Cohorts is really senseless. Instead increase their upkeep. I'd also like to see buffs to scorpions, ballistae and polybolos' accuarcy, penetration and battery size, since they are worthless at the moment. I also think heavy onagers should do more damage to walls, so I don't need several units of them to knock down a few portions of wall. The food system is still almost as silly as the vanilla one since you literally can't build much else in villages other than ranches and farms. Since the provincial capital is used to construct industry, an aqueduct and a culture building, where do you put your barracks and temples? You have to basically have one province (Italia) dedicated to recruiting all of your armies. You should also look into combining some of the training buildings for this reason.

    Your sprinting fatigue change is also counterproductive, as the AI always sprints and thus tires out all of its troops before you engage, making them easier to kill and rout. Transport ships should also not be capable of ramming and should sink from one or two rams. They should only be allowed to board an enemy ship, but even that should be harder because they need to be slowed down still.
    Ok, I'd like to be a more responsible dev than, say, Creative Assembly () so I'm going to try and respond to every single one of your points honestly and creatively, and in case you're tempted not to read further - I don't disagree with absolutely everything you say, so some things you talk about will be happening:


    Limiting First Cohorts - these are limited for a very simple reason: in Invicta they are a lot better than they are in vanilla; as in vanilla they're pretty pointless; as they're worse than veteran legionary cohorts. In Invicta, they have absolutely amazing longevity in battle, from quite significiantly buffed Melee Defence and Morale values. As a reminder - these now have better melee defence and morale than 'Veteran Legionary Cohorts', but should have less melee attack, making them really tough, durable units that can inspire the centre ranks of your legions

    The idea of these Cohorts is that you have one per Legion to be a core 'leadership' cohort amongst your army, who really hold the centre of your line. I have taken the feedback on the limitations on board, however, and the unit cap for First Cohorts is going to be doubled for the upcoming Update #2, from 4 to 8, so you can have more legions equipped with First Cohorts, but still not field them in large numbers.



    Buffs to Scorpions, Ballistę and Polyboli - I think you're likely to see some buffs, though I'll specify here: the buffs will likely be to Scorpions and Polyboli, and not to Ballistę, as their explosive rounds do an amazing job already, I feel. I'm probably going to ramp up the penetration values of Scorpions and Polyboli at the very least, so they have the capability to 'penetrate' more ranks of men, as these units are really meant to be the support artillery of any army, to provide firepower against enemy formations and not against fortifications themselves, so I think the trade-off is fair. They may get new cost/upkeep values to reflect their new capabilities, though - bear this in mind. I expect these bolt-throwers will get better stats, though, in Invicta


    Heavy Onagers vs Walls - I may well look into this. Whilst I think that multiple ballistae, normal onagers etc. should be required to penetrate walls at any decent speed and with ammunition remaining, heavy onagers are really meant to be the kind of siege engine that you take to breach defences, I agree. Wall hitpoints will not be reduced, but I'll be looking into the siege engine balance against them; so the heavier pieces of equipment may get some partial compensation so they have some extra effectiveness against them. Check back in regularly; I post full update notes so when I start testing and releasing changes along these lines, I'll say so, and you'll know.


    Food System - please check my last few posts about this, lollaaja! There are some changes in my next version of Invicta that will reduce the extortionate severity of the food system without (hopefully) reducing the base difficulty. In short, this works by keeping the base food consumption at entry level, so 'breaking into' a building line still costs as much, but advancing that building line doesn't then inflate hugely like it does in vanilla . By the way - on your point about barracks... These are constructible in even minor settlements, so that shouldn't be a major problem!



    Having to recruit in Italia - it's not just Italia you can recruit you Legions from. Magna Graecia and Corsica et Sardinia also have full legion recruitment capability. But there's logic behind this particular limitation - legionary troops were only ever recruited from the citizens of Rome, and not from provincial subjects. In terms of gameplay, this is a balance against the simple fact that Rome has, by far, the very best infantry in the game, available in almost unlimited numbers and at a very early stage in the game with relatively simple barracks and research. But you don't just have to recruit in these provinces, see. You have so many Auxilia units available - practically anything your enemies can recruit from an area, you can recruit as Auxilia, and more because you can recruit Auxilia Infantry and Cavalry, which are good units with relatively low upkeep. These units should make up large bulks supporting your legions - this is both realistic, and a challenging gameplay aspect, which is entirely intentional.


    I'm looking into which training buildings can recruit which units. It's not totally simple, but hopefully will be rationalised soon.


    Quote Originally Posted by Dekent View Post
    effect_bundles_to_effects_junctions_tables is where faction bonuses are kept, including the 800 gold bonus that african/arabian/britania tribes get
    Thank you Dekent. In the next version, this bonus won't be removed entirely - simply because the AI is so handicapped (even with beta 2.0 patch) that I think it needs a slight boost. It is, however, heavily nerfed from 800 to 200 per turn.
    Last edited by Friar Chris; September 13, 2013 at 04:30 PM.


    Scientia potentia est. Eam bene tege!

  18. #38

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Vanilla fixes and Gameplay changes

    UPDATE 2 NOW AVAILABLE. Download from my DropBox to avoid twcenter site problems:

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/qxtafndojaor0yn/Invicta.pack




    Full change-list coming - it's going to take a while to compile, as I've been saving up everything! The overview, though:


    • Improved Campaign AI. I'm not saying it's foolproof, but the AI should be at least a bit more reactive and competent. Play 'Very Hard'.

    • Mildly reduced food burden. All entry-level buildings that use food still use the same amount of food, but the food inflation for each subsequent stage isn't as extreme. This means you'll still be having to plan out proper food provisioning, but you don't end up with your high-tier buildings requiring two farms each to maintain them... For reference to compare food consumption in building stages fromvanilla > Invicta:
      • 2 > 2
      • 4 > 3
      • 6 > 4
      • 12 > 9
      • 14 > 10


    • Moderately increased edicts, agents, armies limits. I stress 'moderately'; you're not going to find yourself swimming in slots. The Agent slots are now asymmetrical; so you get more of different types of agent at different levels.

    • Enhanced battle pacing. Mild further tweaks, this time not affecting morale but the base melee hit chance: this slightly reduces the melee hit chance all-round, making head-on battles longer, but maintaining the huge damage inflicted by charges, missiles and flanking.

    • Less stragglers on the Campaign map. You should have less enemy armies with silly units with only 8 men remaining in them now; the threshold at which defeated armies units are disbanded is increased. Side-effect seems to be that the upkeep and slots are freed up for the enemy to actually recruit more fresh troops or mercenaries, too.

    • A dozen or so unit balancing tweaks; see my posts in the thread so far for some details.
    Last edited by Friar Chris; September 14, 2013 at 02:57 AM.


    Scientia potentia est. Eam bene tege!

  19. #39

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Update 2 Available 14/09/2013

    I understand why you limited the First Cohorts, but I'm saying that it's a senseless limitation from a game design pov. Your change begins from the assumption that players will 'game' their armies and stack them full of First Cohorts. Some of them might, but they're only cheating themselves. I won't, but I want a First/Eagle Cohort in all of my legions because that's what they had and it adds flavor to playing Rome. On the other hand, limiting Praetorians/Guards makes sense because they were limited in number. If you want to reduce 'gamey'-ness, remove the Veteran/Evocatii. Veterancy comes from having your legions fight, does it not? Then why be able to specifically recruit veterans? Makes no sense, even more so because the tradeoff for having Veterans instead of normal Legionaries is just a few denarii more in upkeep.

    I like the recruitment in Italy, but you might want to look into combining the effects of the auxilia line of buildings with the "cohort barracks" line of buildings and make the latter only buildable in the Italian provinces. Then we could also more realistically have access to some Socii auxiliaries, as it's not really feasible to build a training camp, a siege engineers workshop, a legionary barracks AND an auxiliary barracks all in one province with the way the game is set up. I think it might also be interesting to see if it's possible to add more "imperium" levels and disable single or two-province factions from recruiting agents. The primary effect of this would be to hopefully assist in the end turn lag we now have, and to also further tweak the amount of armies that can be held. A single province faction shouldn't have three armies.

  20. #40

    Default Re: Roma Invicta - Update 2 Available 14/09/2013

    Quote Originally Posted by lollaaja View Post
    I understand why you limited the First Cohorts, but I'm saying that it's a senseless limitation from a game design pov. Your change begins from the assumption that players will 'game' their armies and stack them full of First Cohorts. Some of them might, but they're only cheating themselves. I won't, but I want a First/Eagle Cohort in all of my legions because that's what they had and it adds flavor to playing Rome. On the other hand, limiting Praetorians/Guards makes sense because they were limited in number. If you want to reduce 'gamey'-ness, remove the Veteran/Evocatii. Veterancy comes from having your legions fight, does it not? Then why be able to specifically recruit veterans? Makes no sense, even more so because the tradeoff for having Veterans instead of normal Legionaries is just a few denarii more in upkeep.
    You're limited to the number not just to prevent them being spammed, but also because... from a game design pov, they're meant to be rare, highly specialised units. 8 should be plenty. I will not be changing this.


    Quote Originally Posted by lollaaja View Post
    I like the recruitment in Italy, but you might want to look into combining the effects of the auxilia line of buildings with the "cohort barracks" line of buildings and make the latter only buildable in the Italian provinces. Then we could also more realistically have access to some Socii auxiliaries, as it's not really feasible to build a training camp, a siege engineers workshop, a legionary barracks AND an auxiliary barracks all in one province with the way the game is set up. I think it might also be interesting to see if it's possible to add more "imperium" levels and disable single or two-province factions from recruiting agents. The primary effect of this would be to hopefully assist in the end turn lag we now have, and to also further tweak the amount of armies that can be held. A single province faction shouldn't have three armies.
    Sadly, most of the suggestions in here beyond the level of control we have at present, at least until we get official modding tools.

    If I could find a way of making Cohort Barracks only buildable in the Italian provinces, I would; but I have not been able to find a way so far. At present, though, they can be built anywhere to act as what it says on the tin: a Legion Barracks, that will provide Legionary garrisons to a city that might come under siege.

    Also, you don't have to build legionary and auxiliary barracks in the same one province - Roman citizen troops can be recruited in any of Italia, Magna Graecia and Corsica et Sardinia. That's 3 provinces containing 10 different settlements, so you should be spoilt for choice in finding room for recruitment buildings for your core legions.

    Siege Engineers should be capable of full recruitment options anywhere; these machines of destruction are made of timber, metal and sinew, and so don't require a pool of Roman citizens to be recruited!



    I've just pushed a hotfix (should be the same download link) which quite significantly buffs Javelin damage, but at the same time reduces the ammunition capacity of all javelin-equipped skirmishers by 40%. This provides a greater contrast against slingers; whilst javelins can inflict a lot of damage quicker, they cannot provide ranged support throughout a battle, and are best used to soften enemies tactically or in a skirmishing phase. Not that the AI bothers with skirmishing phases in Rome II, but that's beyond modding's ability to fix, sadly.
    Last edited by Friar Chris; September 14, 2013 at 04:46 AM.


    Scientia potentia est. Eam bene tege!

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