Requests, Suggestions, Ideas and Feedback

[Go0lden_Archer]

And hi again

I've just figured that AI is unable to do anything when it's in war with it's neighbors, cuz few agents just screw the construction time so much that eventually AI have this:

There's a little work around in other hosted modification, with agents no longer extending construction time. Can it be done for MM too? It's really annoying to see this kind of stuff and not be able to do anything about it.

[Magnar]

ill take another a look at nerfing agents and will add that to the list. maybe not removing that ability but reducing its effect

[LeicsFox]

area of recruitment?

[Magnar]

AOR currently exists in overhauled factions.

The AOR currently used is based on the vanilla roman auxilia zoning. A more precise AOR zoning will be added once the CA patching stops.

[LeicsFox]

awesome, sounds great

[Antonov]

Do you plan to port or use for reference some of the research put into the first Europa Barbarorum (RTW mod)? Since it's just research, and it's already done, why spend time researching if you're going to come up with similar results.

[Magnar]

The results are similar but not the same. We dont plan on porting EB to Rome 2, however we do take their research into consideration as well as a number of other sources. Our goal is not to be EB for rome 2 but rather to be as historically accurate as possible.

[Antonov]

Thanks! Another question - do you plan further adjustments to the upkeep of mercenary units? I'm trying to play with "historically correct" legions and their default upkeep is equal to their hiring price, which is killing me atm

[Magnar]

we will overhaul all mercenaries with more realistic prices and upkeeps but it is for the furture .

[Roach]

As a researcher for the mod, I try to do all my research from scratch. That said, when I look at EB after completing research on a faction it is clear that they have done good work and if this mod differs from EB it is because we can back it up with academic sources. There are a lot of resources that have made it onto the internet in recent years (thanks Google especially), so it would be irresponsible of us not to work hard on the research for this mod and make use of every source that is available.

We are a small team that is trying to do as much as any mod team out there, so we're grinding through step by step and making sure that we lay rock solid groundwork with our research.

Mercenaries were an integral part of Hellenistic warfare for many states, and though native faction rosters come first we are already planning ahead when it comes to mercenaries. Mercenary costs are pretty crazy by default, but I suppose you don't have to deal with any of the downsides mercenaries sometimes brought in real life hehe Building the new mercenary system is definitely something I look forward to.

[Antonov]

Thanks guys. What about modding the map and provinces? Is this possible at all with the current engine? I boycotted all TW games after briefly playing MTW2 so I don't know how things developed onwards. I had started my own RTW map mod some time ago with another guy who was doing work on units and buildings, but we never got further than getting the map to load without CTD-ing Both of us lost interest I guess.

[Magnar]

We've not thought about modding the map. If we were to decide to it would be when everything else was already finished as it is a lot of work if at all possible.

[Balbor]

@Antonov ad far as I know, all TW games since M2TW have been impossible to mod the campaign map. This probably won't change unless CA release the tools to do so. M2TW still remains the most mod friendly version of the total war series. While editing the campaign map in RTW/M2TW only really required photoshot and a basic text editing program, not one has cracked the latter games.

[Krixux]

And hi again

I've just figured that AI is unable to do anything when it's in war with it's neighbors, cuz few agents just screw the construction time so much that eventually AI have this:
(...)
There's a little work around in other hosted modification, with agents no longer extending construction time. Can it be done for MM too? It's really annoying to see this kind of stuff and not be able to do anything about it.

ust now tried Magnar with an agent shield mod and it works just fine. A apologies if giving this inf is inappropriate for this post...
The mod is basically adding extra defense for all agents to all temples. Played this with other mods or vanila and although agents still get through the percentage is much much lower, giving time me and the AI do build and develop. A moment's solution but helps the game in general.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

cm_agent_shield

[Biggus Splenus]

Adding new regions will be possible once CA release the raw campaign model that can be imported to 3dsMax... Only then will any form of campaign map modding be possible... For some reason they didn't include it in their Creation Kit, yet they did for Shogun 2... So they're obviously planning more DLC.

[Whistler118]

Hello Magnar

Just thought I would add my thoughts in more thought out manner. Many of my thoughts are based on the Roman faction campaign as that my main interest. Also as another disclaimer I have no knowledge of how far the game can be modded so I will throw ideas out knowing that many are not possible with the current tools.

1) Roman Reform system - Love the system at the moment but would love to see this fleshed out even more. Numbered or area specific legions should be recruitable. Shield designs change, stats maybe different if possible to reflect historical characteristics, armour to reflect the environment that the legion was posted to, ect. This will add more depth and immersion to the Roman campaign.

2) Formations - Again great formation but again some touching up in my eyes would be great. Shield wall is my pet hate as I would like to have the ability to change the depth and width of the formation like you could in Rome 1. Also the ability to change formation whilst in combat. Roman Infantry were trained to react instantly to commands shouted or blown through trumpets, including formation changes. The ability to change from wedge when charging in then to shield wall when the odds have slid into the enemies favour should incur a negative trait during the change formation but then stabilize when the unit is formed.

3) Further development on the political system - I think this is a out of reach suggestion but developing the political system so it resembled Rome 1 and more carefully controlled political intrigue that gives not only character to the system but also can dramatically alter the peoples or senate's view of you.

4) Flanking and surrounding - As it stands units surrounded or flanked maintain the same stats as if only fighting from the front. If a unit of hoplites was charged in the flank by my victorious legionaries I would like to see a small massacre with increased damage for flanking units. The shock value of being attacked in the side or rear is not enough at the moment to make the unit flee so sustained and often unrealistic fights are occurring for 10-15mins. Furthermore, clear flanks and rears should be identified. This is again probably a game thing rather than a mod thing but too often when charged in a flank the charging unit in formation mod will hit then start "sliding" so it fights a front on front battle despite the initial charge being in the side.

5) Naval overhaul - No need to go into this as i know you are working on this.

6) Citizenship - Much like the RS.2 system, a town can be given citizenship which will change the culture/happiness/stats/recruitable units of the city. This would also change the game when it came to things like recruiting legionaries and require extensive development of a city in a barbarian area in order to get legionaries from it.

7) Spears vs swordsman - More of a "what i have seen" point but at the moment it seems like spearman are generally stronger than sword units. Again this goes back to the massacre and flanking point but spearman need to be looked into. Also a general note about balancing of which we have already spoken about.

8) Tech tree development - More is better in this case. Tech trees should be more developed and also encourage thought into direction and not only time. What i mean by this is that the player should have "general" tech like there is at the moment but also tech that if you travel down closes down other branches. This means that empires will be based around a set of characteristics rather than "who is the more developed".

9) lorica Segmentata - This controversial little point will be interesting to explain. In my opinion I think this armour should be attainable by the player. HOWEVER, you are quite right by saying that it was not in this period so it should not be in the game. This is where my tech idea comes in. If a player wants to purely focus on a "military reform" tech branch they close down lets say an "industrial development" branch or a "cultural and philosophy" branch. This means that whilst they will not be able to build the highest form of Industrial centers or have significant disadvantages in the political system they have the ability to (after extensive research and time locked) to get the armour. This would be linked to an armourer building who would also need to be fully developed. So the current legionary unit would have to go to a region which has a high level armourer building, they will need a costly retrain of which then they will then have lorica segmentata armour.

A similar theory can be used when developing the rectangle shields or the Spanish steel gladius, Spanish / French horse ect.


I think Ill end it there but the final two points are the real things that "way down the line" development should consider. Playing total war game isn't just about following the road of history its also about taking that step or two off the beaten track and skimming the surface of the "what ifs" of history. Allowing players to mould it a little beyond what it should be.

Thanks for reading this quite lengthy post and if i think of anything else as I play through my current campaign I will add it to this list.

[Magnar]

Cheers for your feed back whistler.

1) We plan to add them but they are currently not a priority as rome already has 70 units and other factions still need to be overhauled. There are still a number of other areas we'd like to improve Rome further with but they will likely be done bit by bit with each update depending on the amount of time we have before we want to release each update

2 & 4) We will be overhauling combat and all unit stats once all factions are overhauled. We are currently working on an abstracted unit stat calculation system which will be implemented for all units.

3) Not sure how possible that is atm, there are plenty of ideas floating around but im not too sure what is really possible and most our energy is focused on faction overhauls atm. When we have more time to put towards exploring political options we'll have a better idea of what can be done, but atm dont expect much

5) In progress, an overhaul to some extent will be released with the next update (thats the plan at least) and will likely be expanded on in further updates.

6)We plan on overhauling the building system with a completely new system but again that will have to wait till after roster overhauls are done

7) This is related again to unit stats. Especially in the early game, most of the elite units are spear units. eg Triarii vs Hastati - obvioulsy triarii will win. But again this will need testing and be a factor in our units stat and equipment overhaul

8) As far as I know, there is very little we can do with the tech tree, we have a few ideas of things we may do but again its not planned until later... after other overhauls are done

9) Im not against LS, as it was used in the game time period ca 9 ad and the game ends around 14-30 ad. Ive stated before that we will likely add a 4th roman reform 'tiberian' where LS becomes available right at the end of the game, but again it is not a priority and other factions take priority atm.

10) As for 'what if' units, that is not within the scope of this mod. We will create only what we can find sources to back up. 'What if' units will need to come from sub mods. If you want to make a sub mod of 'what if' units, then when we finish out unit stat calculation we will gladdly recalculate the stats of those units when the time comes (and the sub mod creator desires).

Keep the feedback coming

[Whistler118]

Cheers for the reply Magnar. Very interesting to see where the mods going. I look forward to the faction overhauls and ever hopeful that CA will release more modding tools so the tech / political system can be improved.

[Balbor]

Personally I'm against making numbered or area specific legions, you can already rename armies, and the situation that resulted in those legions won't match the players experience unless you decided to specificity follow doing 'what Rome did when Rome did it.

[Magnar]

It wont be area specific "legions" i am against that as well.

Instead it will be area specific "cohorts"

I cant remeber exactly when off the top of my head, but some time during the game period (i think 0ad) approx 35% of roman legionaries were not italian born.