With all the hub-bub and controversy over Rome2...some loving it, and some not so much, I think it's necessary (at least for me) to do some thinking about the future of RS2. A lot of people have praised it and shown support for it....so here's an opportunity to voice ideas, likes, dislikes....and in short, provide some ideas for me to make it even better. I can't offer sea battles, or anything that RTW just can't do, but there are things that can be done to some extent, and are at least worth a try.
For example, I aim to try and improve Diplomacy in RS2 by any means I can find to do it. I can't change the code that is there, or necessarily the way it works. But I may be able to affect a faction's choices regarding diplomacy by either rewarding it, or punishing it for a wrong choice. For example, you are allied with faction 'X', and then for no reason, they betray and attack you. My solution to this would be a set of traits, given to the faction leader involved, and then propagated to all named characters (visible in the FL's list, but hidden in all the other's). The 'good' trait would give a bonus for the alliance of faction 'x' with faction 'y'...probably a trade bonus....as long as the two factions are allied. If the alliance is broken, the faction will suffer a penalty, on the other hand, that takes away the bonus and gives a trait with a tax penalty (negative trade bonuses don't work). Triggers would determine whether the player or the AI faction broke the alliance....at least I 'think' this may be possible.
I'd also like to find ways to at least simulate better a more active diplomacy...by giving Diplomats rewards for brokering deals with factions.....such as, 'Made peace with Macedon', or something like that. In other words, a sort of rewards system like Roman Generals can get.
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I am also seeking and hoping for someone who can help or figure out either WHY all the buildings in a settlement can't be seen in the normal Strat UI...OR....find a way that the 'destroy buildings' button in the building browser could be activated so that they could be destroyed there. You can see the buildings there, but you can't get rid of them if you wanted. The button is just always disabled. Frustrating, and I'd love to fix this.
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I am going to remove all but one of the Temple trees from RS2, and maybe expand that tree to 8 or 9 levels. Now, before you all seek to tar and feather me, let me explain why. The EDB in RS2 is only one or two short of the max trees allowed, and I need extra ones for other things. So what I have done in a test bed for all of this, is have one temple..rather expensive...with a lot of nice bonuses. To ease the pain of removing the others, I created ancillaries (priest and priestess) for all the gods in the game (with the descriptions for them including the old temple descriptions), and then used the triggers to limit them so that any one character can only get one of them. In this way, a lot of characters will get one, and they are more diversified, and virtually nothing is lost concerning the gods of all these factions (except the buildings).
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With the additional building slots, I am going to continue working on more specific differences between Governors and Generals, and drastically change the way the Romans (at first) recruit units. The first change will be to 'revise' the descriptions of the current RTW 'mines and mines+1' buildings and use the Strat model that is generated when you build a mine to instead represent a 'Fortified' city....by showing a little castle model next to the city in question (lifted from M2TW
). This will be an important and necessary change, I feel, because I want it to be easy for the player to identify a fortified city since the best units he\she can recruit will be recruitable only in those cities. And building a Fortified City will be a 'permanent' choice....one needing forethought and planning during a campaign. This type of city will be upgradeable to a 'Merged City'...with some of the benefits of an 'Economic' city, in allowing a number of other buildings to be built. Also, only Fortified and Merged cities will be able to build Stone walls or above. Fortified cities will not make a lot of money...if any. The idea will be to encourage a majority of 'Economic' cities to support the Fortified ones...ala Rome2.
Economic cities, on the other hand, will be the money makers. You'll be able to build all the economic buildings to all levels....in effect, all buildings except walls and barracks above a certain level.
The old mining tree will be merged with the other mining tree in RS2 and added to the 'top' of it. Gold and Silver will be merged into one resource, and no little mining model will show anymore. I figure it's time that things change anyway, and the mining model is of less importance to me than implementing this change. I have to use one of the resources...either gold or silver, in order to show the little castle, so that's why they will be merged.
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The Roman barracks system will change drastically. There are several reasons for this, based on player input and my own dislikes of the current system.....and this will provide a better solution to all. First, I much preferred the Legion recruitment setup in RS1, where you were limited to 'a' Legion in a region. It caused retraining issues, yes, but it also made it a real challenge to expand historically. The current RS2 system allows Legions to be recruited in a lot of different regions, and it makes it far too easy IMHO.
So I want to have a system that sort of applies both ideas in a different way, and adds to or expands on some old ones.
First of all, the current 'Marian Reforms' event will be done away with and replaced with a fully 'player controlled' building. You build it, and the Marian Reforms occur. You don't build it, and you can play the whole game with the Polybians if you choose. Building it will allow the 'Roman Legionary' and 1st cohort to appear, and all other pre-Marian units will disappear. You can stop there if you wish, and play the whole campaign that way.
Second, building the 'Imperial Reforms' building will 'unlock' all of the named and numbered Legions and Auxilia units. The generic Roman Legionary will disappear, and be replaced with all the new units.
All of this will be done with two distinct yet 'linked' Roman barracks trees that will serve separate functions. The 'basic barracks' will consist mostly of the current RS2 barracks, except that, outside your 'home' territories, you will only be able to build this tree up to the 'order3' or first 'city' level. Economic cities will never be allowed to build any barracks beyond this level (but it will still provide some decent units anyway). In your 'home' territories (which for the Romans in RS2 is 'area6').
(I work more on this later, gotta go now.) WIP