Requests, Suggestions, Ideas and Feedback

[Magnar]

cheers for the feedback JC.

I think improvements to the visuals etc for both forts and sieges would be great but it isnt that high on our priority list atm and i cant say ive looked into it all that much.

Im pretty sure new types of deployables can be added though so i may look at to what extent to possibly add them at a later date

[neoiq5719]

Hi Magar, I have this crazy idea and I dont know if it could be implemented.
There´s a mod around called meaningful resources, is nice but not really significant since you can get those resources quite easily. What this game needs and is what basically drives countries to war is a resource total war. Depending on the location each settlement should produce more than one resource that can trade with but every single structure you wanna build in your settlements should require a specific resource you would have to fight for and that will give u the advantage once u get it.

Now the tricky part is that getting that specific resource should be sometimes a headache (there´s where the fun is), either the faction u r trying to trade with will extort you (large quatities of money), could ask you to do something (like kicking someone else´s ass), getting them a resource they need, or depending on the friendly relationship they just say no.
Now something like this for every resource u need to build whatever, Marble for temples, rock for ports and so on.
Could something crazy like this be implemented?
thx

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Magnar]

I am currently working on a huge resource overhaul which I dont want to go into too much detail just yet until things are closer to complete but will include multiple resource regions and tie in with the new overhauled building system again which i cant go into too much detail yet on .

As for tieing it into diplomacy: that is not possible as most diplomatic options are hard coded.

Making them harder to get: I'm currently looking into this

Having buildings require resources: Im sure this will be implemented to some extent however it is a tough balancing act. The main thing to worry about with this is whether or not the AI can handle such building requirements. None the less, im sure this will feature into the new building system to some extent.

The other aspect of resources is that the more you have, the more willing the AI is to trade with you and the more income you will receive and the amount of income generated by trade and keeping it in balance with the income generated by taxes.

If you watch my lets play videos, you'll see that I've made a small change to trade income which i am currently testing out and will likely make it into the mod before the next major overhaul and will be further tweaked with he resource overhau.

[neoiq5719]

What do u think about this mod?

http://speedy.sh/yBgUZ/Technology-building-pips.pack

[Magnar]

What do u think about this mod?

http://speedy.sh/yBgUZ/Technology-building-pips.pack

its ok and clearly took a bit of effort to put together but wont be added to MM as it lacks a common style

[neoiq5719]

I´m playing the romans at the moment and so far what I´ve noticed is unless I´m wrong and have to continue to see changes:
a) no season gives u a construction bonus
b) all seasons have a line of sight penalty. Why? I dont know
c) AI is dead. Boring as hell.
d) Havent gotten thru the reforms yet but very limited amount of units, maybe that was implemented on purpose to make more difficult.First time I make a considerable amount of money and....nothing to spend it on ´cos there are no good units available.
e) I think there should be an edict available per province conquered.
f) The public order the barracks provide appears in red when I think it should be I dont know in green maybe?
g) I think the difference between units from factions should not be to create stronger thru reforms. Reforms should give u a buff but only slightly over the previous one in attack and defence. The biggest increase should be by creating training fileds and weapons and armor structure ´cos most of the time I finish a campaign without even building any of those and they should be more important apart from the experience the unit gets thru fighting.
h) Breaking a peace treaty or non-aggression pact should be penalised heavier to the point of maybe bringing 2 or 3 neighboring factions to war inmediately. That will make u think before betraying anybody.
i) I have also finished several campaigns and didnt need any research on siege weaponry. That should be more important at certain stages of the campaign.

[Magnar]

I´m playing the romans at the moment and so far what I´ve noticed is unless I´m wrong and have to continue to see changes:
a) no season gives u a construction bonus - Its not only the seasons, its also the climate and terrain which are in the seasons effects
b) all seasons have a line of sight penalty. Why? I dont know - again it is to do with terrain and also to reduce the line of sight of armies and encourage more ambushes
c) AI is dead. Boring as hell. - they have much less income and due to making them defend their cities more, it means they cant really go out attacking and win. Aggression increase over time is also not active and diplomacy is easier. if you get a weak army though , then you will get people attacking you. The diplomacy/campaign ai stuff is mostly from after patch 1 (ie 9 months old)) and is rather different that what it used to be. It may need more tweaking of the ai aggression or difficulty effects
d) Havent gotten thru the reforms yet but very limited amount of units, maybe that was implemented on purpose to make more difficult.First time I make a considerable amount of money and....nothing to spend it on ´cos there are no good units available. Yes the roman citizen units are significantly limited. You should only be able to have on average half your armies filled with citizen units. To have deveent number of men you'll need to recruit mercenaries, auxilia, socii. Historically only 50% of a roman army was roman citizens, there rest were socii. The unit caps will be more generous with later reforms.
e) I think there should be an edict available per province conquered. Edicts will be overhaul with v2.4
f) The public order the barracks provide appears in red when I think it should be I dont know in green maybe? Yes if should be green but I've not got around to fixing it. Buildings will be overhauled with 2.4 so I wont fix it till then
g) I think the difference between units from factions should not be to create stronger thru reforms. Reforms should give u a buff but only slightly over the previous one in attack and defence. The biggest increase should be by creating training fileds and weapons and armor structure ´cos most of the time I finish a campaign without even building any of those and they should be more important apart from the experience the unit gets thru fighting. The biggest stat bonus in the mod is through experience. with 2.4 there will be a stat overhaul which will address most unit imbalances. At the moment they are roughly vanilla stats so that they are balanced with the units that are not yet overhauled. Most reforms are generally to do with equipment and not training so you are right there normally should be no or little difference to skills of units (with some exceptions).
h) Breaking a peace treaty or non-aggression pact should be penalised heavier to the point of maybe bringing 2 or 3 neighboring factions to war inmediately. That will make u think before betraying anybody. This is in the same boat as the AI (c) and will likely need to be reworked as with each patch it is a little further from what it was designed to be.
i) I have also finished several campaigns and didnt need any research on siege weaponry. That should be more important at certain stages of the campaign. I agree and hopefully it will be the case once more of the mod is completed.

Cheers for your feedback. Always appreciated.

[neoiq5719]

I threw in radious AI and I´m seeing some activity

[Magnar]

I threw in radious AI and I´m seeing some activity

Yup that will happen when you increase the AI's base income (by up to 220%),increase the recruitment slots and give the AI up to 40 extra base food like his AI mod does

Most of his AI pack is not actually working (as my mod tables overwrite 80% of his) unless you use mitch's mod manager in which case all the removed vanilla units will become available again so id recommend not doing that.

[neoiq5719]

you are right but I´m sorry no matter how many wonderful ideas this mod could have without a proper AI is just not worth it. There´s no fun in taking over settlement after settlement and seeing armies just sitting there. Is just not fun.

[elbomberoloco]

you are right but I´m sorry no matter how many wonderful ideas this mod could have without a proper AI is just not worth it. There´s no fun in taking over settlement after settlement and seeing armies just sitting there. Is just not fun.

What difficulty level you playing on?

[neoiq5719]

very hard but if u read point c above I guess it doesnt matter.

[Magnar]

very hard but if u read point c above I guess it doesnt matter.

Yeah it doesnt matter too much. Im trying to create an environment where the AI can do well without cheating, though we are a long way from that point if its even possible to get there. If not then we may have to go the same route as Radious et al and just give them bonus' to income etc. as well.

[neoiq5719]

U know I totally agree with you, I understand all those mods in which the AI is given money and they do it to make it more challenging and interesting BUT when they do that then the game is no longer a strategy game. I wish I knew how to work the AI and god knows I´ve tried but I dont know if it´s possible to really tweak the AI to play with the same weapons as the human player and actually do something. When that times comes then we will have a challenging and FAIR game.

[Balbor]

Yeah it doesnt matter too much. Im trying to create an environment where the AI can do well without cheating, though we are a long way from that point if its even possible to get there. If not then we may have to go the same route as Radious et al and just give them bonus' to income etc. as well.

I'm pretty much finished playing with Macedon (only started to check resources that were missing from my Rome campaign. After just over 100 turn:
Carthage is down to it capitol, its not really at war with anyone directly but all its other starting settlements are now in rebel hands, I guess this will be fixed when they get Nova's settlements.
Seleucid and Ptolemaic Empires both went down pretty quickly before I could even see what happened to them.

Roma never really got out of the starting block and if it hadn't of been for me capturing two Etruscan League settlements in Magna Graecia they might of gone down around turn 50. In the 100 turns they didn't upgrade a single building and built two shrines in one settlements. Due to limitation on unit numbers they were never able to field a full army, and were never able to recruit a single auxillia unit having never built the correct building. When the barbarians started throwing full stacks at them they had no way of stopping them. I'm not sure if the current system for Rome is working as the AI cannot use it (as it's more to encourage Role Playing the Romans correctly). The Roman military building is pretty pointless, when I play as Rome I can be by just fine using Auxiliary barracks only.

[Magnar]

now that CA have added an option to make the AI defend its regions better, ill be able to play around more with the AI aggressivenes.

[Balbor]

have you considered adding recruitment based on culture level and/or use the Imperium level for some reforms?

[Magnar]

all that would require scripting and unfortunately we dont have a scripter anymore

[Balbor]

I'm giving DeI a spin at the moment, problem is that i miss stuff from this mod such as the bigger unit sizes, low settlement expansion and reduced effectiveness of armies at sea. And when I come back to this mod I'll no doubt miss some of the stuff they have modded.

what what I gather, using Imperium level for some reforms means units cannot be upgraded*, but the recruitment based on culture level works really well.


*Edit they have a fix for this in the next update

[Balbor]

Done with DeI, despite some cool features and pretty good faction overhauls (though not as detailed as factions MM has done) I found the steamrolling AI to be a massive, unrealistic annoyance.

They added basic units to the main settlement buildings based on the roman auxilia resource, giving a nicer variety of units. I'd like to see it taken one step further though by emulating EBs tire buildings by giving the main buildings multiple upgrade options based on the type of government you want to use.