House Rules for Non-Roman Factions

[Original Gangster]

Not every rule makes the game necessarily more difficult, and I am still figuring out, if those rules make sense. I am currently playing an early game spartan campaign on RS2.6 (vh/vh; fge-garrison script enabled – I'm still not sure, if it's true that vh is more difficult than h, as some say, but I always thought it would be a myth) I started out with the first four rules, the others, I just came up with and want to play-test them in this campaign. What do you think?

• no construction of walls at all
  
• play 0-turn campaign, but recruit as it was a 1-turn campaign
  
• disbanding units is forbidden, except mercenary-units
  
• you have to retrain every unit you once made
  
• you role-play one character (family member until he dies)
  
  
  
  • construction only, if governor is present, but you have to send a message from your character to the city which building to construct, you are allowed to queue up buildings, but when there is no message from your character (this can be one unit sent from the army your character is with) you have to leave the construction on auto-manage, this applies only for construction and not recruiting
    
    
  • you are only able to play battles with your character, every other battle has to be auto-resolved
  
  

• its not allowed to go behind the enemy with missile-infantry units, when you are attacking (it's allowed when you are defending), to go behind means firing in the side of an enemy unit in a degree lower than -10 relative to the side the enemy is facing (or 4 o' clock)
  
• army composition:
  
  
  • max. 3 horse-units (no matter which)
    
  • as many generals as you want in one army
    
  • max. 3 elite-hoplite units
    
  • max. 3 phalangite-units
  
  

[High Fist]

I don't like any of those rules.

[Original Gangster]

I forgot to ask this in my original post: What are your house rules?

[High Fist]

I just sort of go with the flow and play to my factions strengths. As Rome I would use at most three units of cavalry, but usually two does fine. Two archers, two skirmishers, two triarii and the rest cohorts, some of which are Allied.

I always retrain units and I don't see the point in disbanding them anyway; it's and faster to retrain.

Role playing a family member seems interesting, and might be worthy of it's own campaign. Might try that some time. I could even have a different save from my usual campaign and RP one of the members there. Seems int'resting, nice idea.

Oh, and I always have governors in all of my cities - much more money.

[Kenny Works]

Thanks for this thread. I was actually going to post a question on this today. Interesting house rules and + rep. I don't agree with all of them, but some are new to me.

For recruitment, I force myself to permanently maintain any army I create (but I play as Rome). So once a legion is created, I have to keep it up, or try to. This forces me not to spawn armies because it will crash your economy. I also have a rule to replenish by recruiting new units and marching them to where they're needed.

I'd also be interested in seeing a discussion on what's considered gamey tactics. Back in the day, when I was play RTR and the original Rome, using spies to open city gates was considered "gamey." Now that many mods including RSII have a garrison script, this suddenly isn't gamey any more. But according to some people on this forum, using cavalry to flank your enemies line and recruiting more than a few units of archers is "gamey."

So when you make house rules, for non-Roman as well as Roman factions, what do you consider "gamey" and how to structure your rules against that.

[High Fist]

Personally, using many archers or many cavalry would be kinda "gamey". It's unnecessary and not as fun. Though most people don't anyway, so that's cool.

Using spies to spread plagues I might consider gamey too, though I use spies to open gates plenty.

EDIT: 1,500th post!

[Kenny Works]

I personally don't use any archers in my pre-Marian Roman armies. I use one or two in my allied legions, but I keep the romans and allied units separate. In my allied armies, I use maybe one or two archers. Cav is usually around two or three units per army.

My old house rules for Macedonian campaigns include:

No using spies to open city gates.

No auto-resolving (this was back in the days of RTR) unless clearly outnumbered.

No sending an entire stack to fight two or four units. Just send a detachment.

No "searching" for enemy fleets with armies aboard. Some play that they don't sink them, but I just don't even look. That seems fairest. If I see a fleet, I sink it, and whether it's empty or full, I never know.

Roleplaying leaders does sound interesting, but how exactly do you go about that?

Battle tactics: I recently turned off my battle map radar. The new army strategies employed by RSII, which seemed silly to me until I turned it off, suddenly became devastating.

(And for this to work, you have to limit your camera to what your units can see. So no flying over the map like a crow.

Here's an example: over the weekend, my Romans fought the Boii extensively, trying to defend their northern holdings. In one battle, my units deployed. I was attacked, so I waited for the enemy to appear. Nothing happened. The battle was on one of the new maps; the terrain was covered with trees. To make matters worse, that fog that is everywhere in RSII had set in.

We waited. And waited.

Finally, I sent out my cavalry on the flanks and an my skirmishers to the front. Slowly, carefully, they moved into the fog. Still nothing. Did the enemy just abandon the battle field? They do that sometimes, you know. Then my cavalry spotted a unit of Boii Elite Skirmishers. Report back. Advance two cohorts into that area. Nothing. It was suddenly like a game of hide and seek.

At this moment, my skirmishers spotted the main host. My army advances, advances - and then I'm struck on one flank by units I never saw until they attacked. I try to turn and the main host ... or was it a second army? ... attacks. My nice formation is in shambles now and it seems like the woods are flowing with Boii.

An hour later, my army was still alive, but barely. And the battle still isn't over yet, for Boii just disappeared into the woods. I now had to find them again.

On the one hand, battles are much more realistic and if you pay on hard truly devastating. On the other hand, they take a lot longer. A lot longer. One battle can take over an hour as you try to locate the enemy and fight it. Obviously, if you can see the army, that's not a problem. But searching the entire battle map for one or two units can be a truly frustrating but ultimately rewarding experience.

Truly one of the hardest house rules you can have, IMO.

[High Fist]

Gasp how do you turn the mini map off?! I want that.

(Another rule is no pausing, unless being distracted by the outside world)

On the matter of role playing; autoresolve all battles and but all cities on AI management unless your general's in it, I suppose.

There once was a game, long before my time here, wherein people shared a Rome save and played as different members of the senate.
A mod tried to get this game started up for R2; here's the thread: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...up-in-progress
This never took off, but maybe there might be a difference if we play Roma Surrectum instead of R2? I know at least a few of the people that frequent the Coliseum have RS2.

If there are enough people interested, I'll bring it to the attention of m_1512, the mod who tried to (re)start this game.

EDIT: the third post mentions that they used to do this with RS2.

[Kenny Works]

Gasp how do you turn the mini map off?! I want that.

F5 on my machine turns off the mini-map.

F6 controls the top screen menu.

F4? I think controls the unit icons.

[CTL] + F2 (IIR) makes the unit information boxes disappear.

Edit: Regarding the no pausing house rule, I don't like that one. I don't think it's realistic. If you order a unit to do something, charge an enemy or whatever, and then move to another part of the battle to give additional orders, and the situation changes, your unit will continue to execute the order you gave it without taking into consideration the change. This rule makes your units mindless autotrons that can't make a decision (which, because this is a game, they are right?). I want my units to have centurions who can react to a situation.

So I don't think it's realistic. The game becomes about clicking fast, not strategy.

But the mini-map? Turn that off if you want a challenge. In the original Rome, it didn't help much to turn the mini-map off. Just head for the center of the map and you'd find your enemy. RTR was the first Rome game I played where I turned the "radar" off and, wow, the game became much more immersive.

I guess I always through RSII was designed to be played with radar map off. Otherwise, all the great strategy improvements are wasted.

[High Fist]

No pausing is the best way to improve in the game, IMO. Might not be true but if I was looking for a good player I'd make sure they play without pausing before anything else. And you'll get used to it quickly too. Quicker at decision making, gives less room to breath for bigger battles, more room for error. Sure, having the idiots stand there without reacting to anything may not be immersive, but neither is a big PAUSED sign in the middle of the screen or controlling time.

If you wanna play multiplayer too, ya gots to go without pausing.

[Original Gangster]

yeah, I forgot some rules, as I always played with my army composition close to cwb-rules. I only use max. 4 foot missile units f.e.. I don't assassinate enemy generals, though I did it in the past a lot (the sound of the assassin slicing the enemy's throat is so cool, well, in a morbid, weird way at least ). I also don't open gates with spies anymore, it's even unfairer for the AI, since I think I never saw it do it to me. Of course I try not to load a previous savegame, if anything went wrong, except when it crashed or a similiar technical cause.

The roleplaying part: I queue up buildings, when the general, I have chosen to roleplay(FM) is in the city. If he's campaigning, I send a horse unit from his army to the settlement in which I want to build something. When my army is too far away, I just have auto-manage construction turned on and let the AI decide what to build. But I have to say I'm just testing this system right now, maybe I get fed up with it and throw it away, or mod it further, let's see how it plays out. I'm really curious on how the auto-resolving part plays out for battles I initiate with the AI, when the general, I'm roleplaying is not there. I just like this sort of "coinflippy" side of things, where I send an army to invade crete and don't know yet if it will be successful or whatnot.

I just played a battle near Athens, with restricting the camera to my generals point of view, man this was awesome I had to run along my battle line to coordinate flanking manoeuvres in the later stages of the battle, when the enemy was exhausted and I finally got to roll up the battle line with my reserves. Needless to say I burned Athens to the ground - you fools why didn't you just learn from history? I think I will try turning off the radar as well it's a good idea. Although I don't think that I will search for enemy troops who came back from routing after I practically won the battle and are now hiding anywhere in the woods.

[Original Gangster]

When I don't pause the game, I sometimes lose the oversight or forget a unit, who then gets decimated - I like this, you aren't able to micro-manage your units in a sc2 sort of way, and I feel like it makes the decisions count more. Like f.e., when you decide to commit a unit, you attack-click and look to an other part of the battle or at an other unit and you can't pause and look if the unit, you just committed to the battle, is being outflanked and then retreat it.

[SD_Man]

I have a new house rule;
Put all units under AI control.
Try winning with that (General unit may be excluded).
IMO this is the "realist" it can get.

[MacBlain]

Been playing this way for ages:

- Minimal UI, no banners, no green arrows
- No pause
- No unit voices
- Restricted tw-style camera
- After deployment I press f5, f6, f6, f7, ctrl+f2, then start the battle which means:
- No radar
- No consulting unit dispositions via icons
- No unit cards
- No mouseover info
- And the kicker, this is important!: stay zoomed all the way in at all times! This means mousewheeling down immediately when the camera jumps up automatically.

You have to know the controls very well, and you have to use some tricks to make this work, but it does work in every situation and it makes for an entirely different game. Ancient battles were a struggle to stay organized and communicate. The real problem with the TW series, in my opinion, is not the AI but rather the staggering amount of command control and information given to the player.

If you are really hardcore:
- Turn the camera movement speed all the way down. It's still necessary to jump with doubleclick and delete, however.
- Reduce the camera FOV (I play with 45 degrees).
- No using alt to check unit destinations. (I can't even handle this one -- it might be impossible).

If you want to try this, you have to understand very well how unit groups work and use them a lot. And when the battle starts to get too crazy, you just select all, group, turn the army over to the ai, hope for the best, and do what you can. Playing this way creates difficulties whose consideration starts to extend into the operational picture, and it makes this stunning game even more vivid, beautiful and exciting.

[Original Gangster]

Are no banners and green arrows possible for rs2.6 also, or only 2.1 and older versions? How can you actually hand the army over to the AI? What do you mean by jump with doubleclick and delete? What does delete do?
An other question I had for a long time: It's not possible to bring the units in your army on the campaign map in a different order, is it? The only way to do this is split the army up and pick them up in a certain order, or is there an other way?

[SD_Man]

I believe to put your army under AI control you have to first group them then press the little computer-gear "ability" icon that pops up. Adds more RP aspects IMO

[High Fist]

Been playing this way for ages:

- Minimal UI, no banners, no green arrows
- No pause
- No unit voices
- Restricted tw-style camera
- After deployment I press f5, f6, f6, f7, ctrl+f2, then start the battle which means:
- No radar
- No consulting unit dispositions via icons
- No unit cards
- And the kicker, this is important!: stay zoomed all the way in at all times! This means mousewheeling down immediately when the camera jumps up automatically.

Just tried these, they're pretty interesting! Apart from staying zoomed in all of the time, dunno if I'd be fit for that.

Funnily enough it was a heroic victory.

[Kenny Works]

Interesting comments. Still I remain unconvinced on the issue of not pausing. I believe it makes the game harder, of course, and no doubt about that. But not pausing at all when in reality you'd have a number of aides to whom you could delegate authority, just doesn't seem like a logical improvement to me - even if it makes the game harder. Units will stand by and let another be completely be destroyed simply because you forgot to click a mouse button. There will be no reaction to circumstances unless it's you that reacts.

Another thought: For as long as I've played RTW, my default speed has been the double speed. On my keyboard, I reassign [CTL + D] to double speed and [CTL + T] to triple speed. [CTL + N] is reserved for normal speed. My default speed for all battles is double speed. Battles take long enough as it is. I rarely play on normal speed any more. The battle just take to long and in RSII there's just so many of them. I march at triple speed and in battles where I'm waiting for something to happen, like a cohort to break through a gate, I'll switch to triple speed.

But yes, in that game environment, I pause.

[High Fist]

There you go; play at normal speed and you'll have no need of pausing.

[Kenny Works]

There you go; play at normal speed and you'll have no need of pausing.

Very true. But then my battles would take, well, twice as long.