Sere's playtesting thread

[sere]

Thanks! I'm happy to see that it's kept your interest enough to keep checking back.

Yeah, it's just what I'd like a mod to be. Especially the campaign map and the need for careful management because of high unit upkeep costs.

re: Cierus
I played a Greek Cities campaign for a few turns (started in the new version of the beta) to test just that. I quickly conquered Heracleia to immediatley build tier 1 roads. Result: I cannot build a mine and the roads are displayed correctly when constructing is finished.
My Seleucid campaign was of course started in the old version of the beta of April 2012, so there appear to be issues with "save file-compatibility".

re: Character Traits
I test-started a couple of campaigns in the new version of the beta and everything is at its proper place. I noticed that in comparison to the old version, the "Large unit size" trait is not displayed anymore.
As for the changes that appeared when I use old save files in the new version (Seleucids, Baktria, Suebi):

• many generals/governors have specifically Roman traits ("Good Roman", "Ex Quaestor"...), the faction heir even has the "Princeps Senatus" trait
• many generals/governors have traits like "Loathes rebellious slaves"
• Spies have generals' traits which give +command
• Diplomats have spies' traits (... I don't have assassins unfortunately)
• many characters have two traits of age ("Youthful" and "Youthful", or "Feeling his age" and "Youthful" )

My guess is this happens because the list of character traits ("descr_character_traits", "descr_VnV_enums"...) was changed with the new version of the beta. Maybe new traits were put in and positions in the list(s) were changed? Again, this is very likely to be an issue of compatibility.

re: Elephants

You can recruit them if you build up to a full colonization building in an AOR_Indi region, so basically all of India. Do you think I should add elephant recruitment to the highest level client kingdom building, too?

Also, the Syrian elephant thing was an oversight on my part. Indian elephants are supposed to be recruitable there, representing the herd at Apamea. However, in the course of making sure I could separate Indian and African (forest) elephant recruitment, I forgot to add in lines for the Syrian region. I've just corrected that in dev (yay macros!).

Thank you already!
But I did some further testing (Forced Diplomacy is a handy tool in that regard ) and there are more issues with the recruitment of Indian elephants. And not only for the Seleucids but for Baktria as well, so I assume it's a more general matter.

1. There are elephant symbols in Bactria (City: Baktra) and Oxiana (Alexandria/Oxus). In both provinces, both factions are unable to recruit any elephants; whether you build a faction's colony building ("Hellenic city I" (plus "II" if Seleucid) or client state building ("Autonomia II") makes no difference; no elephants at all here!
2. The same applies to Gandara (Purushapura), with the exception that it is possible to hire mercenary Indian elephants there. These have javelin armed riders (missile attack: 8) and the "native" looking skin. Is the elephant symbol necessary?
3. In India (Taxila, Multan, Barbarikon, Bhinmal) the recruitment of Indian elephants works fine for both factions. There are 2 options for both the Seleucids and Baktria (this will also give an answer to your question "Do you think I should add elephant recruitment to the highest level client kingdom building, too?"):

• With having client state building level 2 ("Autonomia II") it is possible to recruit two types of "Indian Elephants": 1) the mercenary type described above, 2) the type with archers on top (missile attack: 6) and (supposingly) the proper Seleucid and Baktrian skins (So it is already possible to recruit elephants from the highest client kingdom building! And, imo, it's perfect ike it is )
• With having colony building level 3 or 4 ("Hellenic city I/II") it is possible to recruit "Indian Eelephants" and "Armoured Elephants" in case of Seleucids, and "Indian Elephants" in case of Baktria. So far so good. But the "Indian Elephants" in both cases are of the mercenary type, so javelins, 8 missile attack, "native" skin. I'd like to see the "6 missile attack" type of elephants here, since it is a colony building... Seems more fitting

re: My List
I took a thorough look at my Seleucid and Baktria campaigns and wrote a number of things down. Not sure, if I should post it in this thread or open a new one. I'd need to break it up into 2 or 3 posts for sure

[ahowl11]

That is a great Beta Testing report

[Quinn Inuit]

Yeah, it's just what I'd like a mod to be. Especially the campaign map and the need for careful management because of high unit upkeep costs.

Thanks! We spent a lot of time on the map. Although I'm still finding things to improve. Yesterday, for instance, I redid a lot of the garrisons and some region ownership in Iberia (Hispania, not the other one) to make it more interesting and closer to what I think we'd intended.

re: Cierus
I played a Greek Cities campaign for a few turns (started in the new version of the beta) to test just that. I quickly conquered Heracleia to immediatley build tier 1 roads. Result: I cannot build a mine and the roads are displayed correctly when constructing is finished.
My Seleucid campaign was of course started in the old version of the beta of April 2012, so there appear to be issues with "save file-compatibility".

OK. That's probably back to normal, then. Sorry for the continued construction dust.

re: Character Traits
I test-started a couple of campaigns in the new version of the beta and everything is at its proper place. I noticed that in comparison to the old version, the "Large unit size" trait is not displayed anymore.
As for the changes that appeared when I use old save files in the new version (Seleucids, Baktria, Suebi):

• many generals/governors have specifically Roman traits ("Good Roman", "Ex Quaestor"...), the faction heir even has the "Princeps Senatus" trait
• many generals/governors have traits like "Loathes rebellious slaves"
• Spies have generals' traits which give +command
• Diplomats have spies' traits (... I don't have assassins unfortunately)
• many characters have two traits of age ("Youthful" and "Youthful", or "Feeling his age" and "Youthful" )

My guess is this happens because the list of character traits ("descr_character_traits", "descr_VnV_enums"...) was changed with the new version of the beta. Maybe new traits were put in and positions in the list(s) were changed? Again, this is very likely to be an issue of compatibility.

Oops, sorry. One of the things I did while I was gone was muck with the inheritance system to add a "royal family" trait in order to make kingships be more likely to pass between family members. That probably caused some traits to get applied again when you loaded an old saved game.

re: Elephants

Thank you already!
But I did some further testing (Forced Diplomacy is a handy tool in that regard ) and there are more issues with the recruitment of Indian elephants. And not only for the Seleucids but for Baktria as well, so I assume it's a more general matter.

1. There are elephant symbols in Bactria (City: Baktra) and Oxiana (Alexandria/Oxus). In both provinces, both factions are unable to recruit any elephants; whether you build a faction's colony building ("Hellenic city I" (plus "II" if Seleucid) or client state building ("Autonomia II") makes no difference; no elephants at all here!
2. The same applies to Gandara (Purushapura), with the exception that it is possible to hire mercenary Indian elephants there. These have javelin armed riders (missile attack: 8) and the "native" looking skin. Is the elephant symbol necessary?
3. In India (Taxila, Multan, Barbarikon, Bhinmal) the recruitment of Indian elephants works fine for both factions. There are 2 options for both the Seleucids and Baktria (this will also give an answer to your question "Do you think I should add elephant recruitment to the highest level client kingdom building, too?"):

• With having client state building level 2 ("Autonomia II") it is possible to recruit two types of "Indian Elephants": 1) the mercenary type described above, 2) the type with archers on top (missile attack: 6) and (supposingly) the proper Seleucid and Baktrian skins (So it is already possible to recruit elephants from the highest client kingdom building! And, imo, it's perfect ike it is )
• With having colony building level 3 or 4 ("Hellenic city I/II") it is possible to recruit "Indian Eelephants" and "Armoured Elephants" in case of Seleucids, and "Indian Elephants" in case of Baktria. So far so good. But the "Indian Elephants" in both cases are of the mercenary type, so javelins, 8 missile attack, "native" skin. I'd like to see the "6 missile attack" type of elephants here, since it is a colony building... Seems more fitting

I'm glad you like the recruitment setup.

Hmmm...I'm looking at the current dev version and I think I've fixed some of this stuff already. I'll test it in dev and make sure it works. Your comments did point me to at least two additional errors, though. First, Alexandria Eschate was able to recruit elephants instead of Alexandria on the Oxus. That was just completely wrong, and even the code says as much. Second, you're right that the normal Greek elephants are completely unrecruitable by anyone. I need to add them in.

re: My List
I took a thorough look at my Seleucid and Baktria campaigns and wrote a number of things down. Not sure, if I should post it in this thread or open a new one. I'd need to break it up into 2 or 3 posts for sure

Hey, I'm game if you are. This is saving me a lot of playtesting out in that neck of the woods.

That is a great Beta Testing report

I concur. Thank you for the excellent suggestions!


Update: Fixed the elephants in Dev. Probably. Those things have caused way more trouble than they should have.

[sere]

That is a great Beta Testing report

I concur. Thank you for the excellent suggestions!

Thank you
Knowing that you are already working on these things, esp. the elephant problems, motivates me even more.

Ok, so, my list... I decided to post it here to keep everything in one place
It's going to contain 5 parts, which I'll publish in an at least equal number of posts, depending on the time it takes to write them. I'll start with issues related to the campaing map in general (1) and continue with matters specific to the Seleucids (2) and Baktria (3). After that, I'll post miscellaneous stuff i took notice of while playing (4), before i conclude with posting some--purely subjective--ideas of how to maybe improve balancing and overall gameplay (5).

If I find further issues while playing the game in the future, I'll post them later on as well, so the list is open-ended. Any useful contributions by other players will of course be welcomed

I use the term "issues" because the things I took notice of are not technically "bugs" and they include a lot of really minor stuff. Nevertheless, I fell like addressing these would work a great deal in favor of immersion and enjoyment of ExRM in general.


Part 1: CAMPAIGN MAP

1) By default (turn #1/start of the game), there are two building slots with the same building in the following cities:

• Apamea (Lower Syria): double Roads
• Seleucia (Babylonia): double Roads (In my campaign there was a flash flood in that region after which 1 of the roads were damaged. They cannot be repaired for some reason.)
• Barbarikon (Lower Indus): double Trader/Market
• Harmozeia (Carmania): double Temple (the big one; extra Temple of Nike)
• Pasargadae (Persis): same as above (I take the 2 temples as a feature, not sure if it might even be intended to be that way )

2) Jend (Chorasmia) has mines by default, which are not displayed on the map and apparently do not produce any income (-> settlement stats)

3) Three cities in the Far East still have underscores in their names:

• Alexandria_Eschate (Ferghana)
• Alexandria_on_the_Oxus (Oxiana)
• Alexandria_in_the_Caucasus (Drangiana)

4) In Gabala (Albania), according to the horse symbol, you should be able to recruit heavy cavalry (Albanian cataphracts?). A client state building offers no such options (this is no effect of the Seleucid cataphract reforms, in the recruitment option list of that building (Autonomia II) displayed ingame the Albanian cataphract is missing completely). If starting a campaign with the 'Ippeidemos, you cannot recruit Albanian cataphract from the default government building there ("Tribal Overlords") as well.
(Let me add that Albanian cataphracts can be recruited from a client state building in Van (Armenia). Not sure if this is intended.)


This is all I have time for right now, Part 1 will continue next time...

[Quinn Inuit]

Thank you
Knowing that you are already working on these things, esp. the elephant problems, motivates me even more.

You're welcome! I appreciate the help. This saves me a lot of playtesting.

Ok, so, my list... I decided to post it here to keep everything in one place
It's going to contain 5 parts, which I'll publish in an at least equal number of posts, depending on the time it takes to write them. I'll start with issues related to the campaing map in general (1) and continue with matters specific to the Seleucids (2) and Baktria (3). After that, I'll post miscellaneous stuff i took notice of while playing (4), before i conclude with posting some--purely subjective--ideas of how to maybe improve balancing and overall gameplay (5).

If I find further issues while playing the game in the future, I'll post them later on as well, so the list is open-ended. Any useful contributions by other players will of course be welcomed

That works for me. I've moved these comments to their own thread because I thought they deserved it.

I use the term "issues" because the things I took notice of are not technically "bugs" and they include a lot of really minor stuff. Nevertheless, I fell like addressing these would work a great deal in favor of immersion and enjoyment of ExRM in general.

That makes sense. I do want to polish this up.

Part 1: CAMPAIGN MAP

1) By default (turn #1/start of the game), there are two building slots with the same building in the following cities:

• Apamea (Lower Syria): double Roads
• Seleucia (Babylonia): double Roads (In my campaign there was a flash flood in that region after which 1 of the roads were damaged. They cannot be repaired for some reason.)
• Barbarikon (Lower Indus): double Trader/Market
• Harmozeia (Carmania): double Temple (the big one; extra Temple of Nike)
• Pasargadae (Persis): same as above (I take the 2 temples as a feature, not sure if it might even be intended to be that way )

2) Jend (Chorasmia) has mines by default, which are not displayed on the map and apparently do not produce any income (-> settlement stats)

3) Three cities in the Far East still have underscores in their names:

• Alexandria_Eschate (Ferghana)
• Alexandria_on_the_Oxus (Oxiana)
• Alexandria_in_the_Caucasus (Drangiana)

4) In Gabala (Albania), according to the horse symbol, you should be able to recruit heavy cavalry (Albanian cataphracts?). A client state building offers no such options (this is no effect of the Seleucid cataphract reforms, in the recruitment option list of that building (Autonomia II) displayed ingame the Albanian cataphract is missing completely). If starting a campaign with the 'Ippeidemos, you cannot recruit Albanian cataphract from the default government building there ("Tribal Overlords") as well.
(Let me add that Albanian cataphracts can be recruited from a client state building in Van (Armenia). Not sure if this is intended.)


This is all I have time for right now, Part 1 will continue next time...

Cool. I've corrected all of those in dev except for #3, which I'm leaving because I want to make sure the scripts that target those cities work properly. Some commands seem to require that the spaces be used correctly, but I've had trouble with spaces in city names in the script files.

[sere]

That works for me. I've moved these comments to their own thread because I thought they deserved it.

Thank you. Moving all of these posts to a new thread was an excellent solution.

I've corrected all of those in dev except for #3, which I'm leaving because I want to make sure the scripts that target those cities work properly. Some commands seem to require that the spaces be used correctly, but I've had trouble with spaces in city names in the script files.

Ok.
Is changing a city's name a problem in general then? That would be bad news for...

Part 1: CAMPAIGN MAP (continued)

This part will focus on geographical errors.

I'm aware this is potentially shaky ground. And that there is a trade-off between gameplay and perfect realism. Also, the campaign map does by far more right than wrong.

Further, I can imagine that these kind of problems might not be your top priority and that you would not want to go back and mess around with the map too much. All I can hope for is that you take an honest look at these points and maybe reply which of these can actually be taken care of.

That said, I'm going to address a few mistakes which really annoy me, because they could have been easily avoided in the first place. Some others aren't as blatantly stupid (sorry), but could still be found bothersome. Finally, there's a third category correction of which would be a nice bonus.
I'm going to start with mistakes of the first category and work my way down to points I consider less important or difficult to change.

1) Seleucia (Babylonia), Babylon (Tigris): the province names; Seleucia sits on the Tigris, Babylon on the Ephrates. => Seleucia (Tigris), Babylon (Babylonia)

2) Palma (Baliares): on the map, Palma is located on Ibiza; it's actually on Mallorca (the biggest island, nicely presented on the campaing map) => change location or change city name

3) Maronia (Maronia): that's just completely wrong; Maronia lies at the coast west of the river Hebros (which is also presented on the map) and not even close to the Gallipoli peninsula => change city name (maybe to Lysimacheia?), change province name (maybe to Chersonesos?)

4) Northern/Northeastern India:

• the map's Purushapura (Gandara) (Peshawar) is located on the eastern side of the Indus River; actually that's right where Taxila was
• the map's Taxila (Dheri) is clearly in the middle todays Punjab and not where it's supposed to be
• the map's Hydaspes province (city: Bhinmal) lies east of Punjab and the Indus region and therefore has no contact with the Hydaspes river at all, which flows through the Northwest of Punjab
• change names:
  
  • Purushapura (Gandara) => Taxila (Gandara);
  • Taxila (Dheri) => Sangala (?) (Hydaspes);
  • Bhinmal (Hydaspes) => Bhinmal (Thar?) (after the desert)
  
  

5) Abydos (Mysia): it should sit right at the coast, approximately where the olive oil symbol is on the map

6) Kartuba (Turdertania): it's location would be further east, still on the northern bank of that river, app. at the point just north of the horse symbol

7) Bylazora (Paionia): way too far north; it was actually close to the Axios river, in the southern part of the map's Paionia province; at the moment, its location would be somewhere in todays Kosovo or Serbia

8) the province Dacia inferior (city: Ratiara) lies south of the danube, while Dardania (city: Sucidava) lies north of that river => swap the province names (?)


9) Alexandria in Susiana (Characene): it could be moved closer to the river(s) and/or the gulf

10) Barbarikon (Lower Indus): the map shows it on the eastern instead of on the western side of the delta

11) There is no way through the mountains from Alexandria in Arachosia (Arachosia) (Kandahar) to Alexandria_in_the_Caucasus (Drangiana) (near Kabul). Alexander went this way in 330/329 to reach Baktria, while Antiochos III went in the opposite direction during his "Anabasis". It would be really neat if the player could do the same in ExRM.

12) On the map, a direct path from Moudon (Helvetia) to Vesontio (Germania superior) is blocked by the Black Forest (north), the Jura Mountains (South), the Vosges Mountains (northwest) and the Rhine (in the middle).

[sere]

Part 2: SELEUCID EMPIRE

1) With upgrading from colony building level 3 ("Hellenic city I") to colony building level 4 ("Hellenic city II") the player won't be able to recruit "Silver Shield Hypaspists" and "Podromoi" any longer, but access to recruiting "Thorakitai" will be granted (as a "reform"). The way I take it is that "Thorakitai" replace "Silver Shield Hypaspists", which is fine. Is it intended to be like that? Is losing the ability to recruit "Podromoi" intended?

2) just a minor point: the horse skins of several units don't seem to be fitting. For this, I'm looking at the pictures in the post "Government and Reforms" in your Documentation thread.

• Early bodyguard unit's horses are of the half armoured type (the one you can see in the bottom left picture)
• Late bodyguard unit's horses wear a leopard's fur (top left picture)
• "Seleucid cataphracts" have the same horses as the Median Agema, the fully armoured type (bottom right picture)

Since I'm in favor of a little variety, I'd like the late bodyguard to stay as it is, whereas the early bodyguard could get the same horses the late type has right now (those units' riders have different skins) and the cataphracts could get the half armoured type of horse. But that might not reflect the improved armor on the late bodyguard... I'd just like the late bodyguard to not look exactly the same as a "Seleucid cataphracts" unit Anyway, that's just my two cents...

3) Seleucid cataphract reforms:

• conditions for receiving the trait "BeatenByCats" (source: "export_descr_character_traits.txt"): I know it makes sense, but to me it was quite counter-intuitive when I discovered losing to which factions would trigger the trait, especially in case of Barbarian Tribes (and Baktria to a smaller degree). In the end, it comes down to "suffer a defeat in the Far East!" (or, in case of Barbarians and 'Ippeidemos, anywhere on the map!). Maybe it would make sense to include the Sarmatians as well, although they don't have much initial contact with the Seleucids. -- I'm more concerned about the fact that only a loss in an open field battle will trigger the trait. I myself tried to trigger the reform vs. Parthia, but the AI was very reluctant to face an army on open ground. In the end, I lost my patience after I had (deliberately) lost a siege attack (with enough soldiers and enough casualties) and gave the trait to a general via the console (reform works fine after that; I did not come around to test it with Baktria, which is unfortunate looking back from today). I really don't like the reform to be restricted to open field battles and feel like including siege battles and ambushes would largely decrease potential frustration for the player. I think this is the line that matters in the script (example: small unit size, vs. 'Ippeidemos):
  Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

  Trigger seleucids_get_owned1as
  WhenToTest PostBattle
  
  Condition IsGeneral
  and not WonBattle
  and I_ConflictType Normal
  and FactionType seleucid
  and GeneralFoughtFaction numidia
  and NumFriendsInBattle > 240
  and Trait BeatenByCats < 1
  and Trait AlreadyBeatenByCats < 1
  and Trait Unit_Size_Small >= 1
  and PercentageOfArmyKilled > 31
  
  Affects BeatenByCats 1 Chance 100
  The other ConflictTypes are (at least I think so): I_ConflictType Siege ; I_ConflictType SuccessfulAmbush
• THIS ALSO APPLIES TO THE FOLLOWING REFORMS: Machimoi Reforms for Egypt; Beaten by Horse Archers for Sarmatia and Parthia; Beaten by Romans for Pontus and Armenia
• disappearing recruitment options from client state buildings ("Autonomia II"):
  
  • Van (Armenia): after the Seleucid cataphract reform, "Albanian cataphracts" are still recruitable here, while Armenian Noble Cavalry is not (are these armoured horse archers btw?)
  • Mtskheta (Caucasian Iberia): "Iberian cataphracts" are still recruitable
  
  

Apropos reforms, before I forget, the Carthaginian and Suebi reforms have the same year/turn number condition as the Polybian reforms.

[sere]

Part 3: BAKTRIA

1) How is it possible to recruit "Baktrian Hetairoi Archers" (not the bodyguard unit but the regular heavy cav with 40 men)? If you right click on a colony building (level 3: "Hellenic city I"), they are listed under the recruitment options, but you cannot actually recruit them. "Baktrian Hetairoi" (without bows) are recruitable, but only in the homelands (Bactria, Oxiana, Ferghana (?)).

2) "Baktrian Hetairoi", which were "Thessalian Cavalry" in the old version of the beta, have the same unit card picture and recruitment icon as Thessalian cav. That's nothing big, just slightly confusing. However, in contrast to the Thessalians, they now come with an added "Bonus fighting cavalry" in their stats. This makes them considerably better compared to other Hetairoi cavalry units, because "Baktrian Hetairoi" have not only the highest defense value (23) of all Hetairoi units, but also come with the new charge bonus of 40, which none of the other Hetairoi have (including Seleucid lancers/cataphracts, Molossian Agema), while sporting the "Bonus fighting cavalry" like the other Hetairoi.

To add a more general note here: Increasing the charge bonus to 40 was a good decision. Heavy cavalry units that have it now usually strike about 10 kills on the charge. Still, (heavy) cavalry is no 'killing machine' by any means, but I think it does its job way better than before. Anyway, not all heavy cavalry units have the new charge bonus, so there are some considerable incosistencies with cavalry stats, like the one described above (I'll talk about a few others in detail in Part 4).
In the old version of the beta, a charge bonus of 27 was the highest value. But in contrast to the new value of 40, it did not have a clear effect on the battlefield. From my experience, units with a charge bonus of 27 score only 2 to 3 kills--if at all. For Hetairoi units, which generally kept their charge boni of 27, this means that they now have a considerably weaker charge than other heavy cavalry.

3) Out of the Baktrian homelands, the faction's recruitment options from its colony buildings are quite weak (I'm not relating to India here). A colony building of level 1 ("Established Hellenic (Faction) Colony"; I label "Initial Colonization" as level 0 to keep things consistent ) has no recruitment options at all. At a level 2 building ("Hellenic settlement") the player can only recruit "Pezoi" (the weakest pikemen unit) and "Greek Thureophoroi". A level 3 building ("Hellenic city I") adds the other 2 pikemen units and "Hypaspistai". If a region gives access to heavy cavalry, "Baktrian Hetairoi Archers" are the sole option (-> 1) ).
The Baktrian roster in Custom Battle includes (standard/Greek) Peltasts. Maybe it would be possible to enable the recruitment of (Greek) Peltasts in campaign, too. They would make up for losing access to "Baktrian skirmishers" when out of their homelands and give at least one recruitment option to a colony building level 1. In comparison, other hellenistic factions can recruit Peltasts, Akontistai and Podromoi (?) from an "Established Hellenic (Faction) Colony". Why shouldn't Baktria like the other factions make use of conquered and/or relocated colonies of hellenic settlers, when it expands to the west?!

[sere]

Part 4: MISCELLANEOUS ISSUES

1) In Custom Battle, the "Oscan veteran infantry" has the same skin as "Samnite light infantry". Apparently, this does not apply to the campaign, here "Oscan veteran infantry" displays its proper skin on the battle map.

2) In Custom Battle, "Polybian Principes" and "Italic Principes" have the same skin, namely the "Polybian Principes" one.

3) "Caetrati Falcata": On the battle map, this unit's weapons are messed up. The men wield their javelins by default, switch to their swords and throw them instead of javelins, while fighting with javelins in melee.

4) The Numidian type bodyguard unit of 'Ippeidemos (and, oddly, available to the Galatians in Custom Battle) is called "Unlocalised Placement Text" and has no unit description.

5) If characters of a faction with various types of bodyguard units come of age or enter the game by marriage or adoption, they all receive the same type of bodyguard unit. Accordingly, there will only be "Gallic Warlord" units (for Barbarian Tribes) and "Scythian General" units (for 'Ippeidemos) left on the map, from Iberia to India, from Numidia to Jaxartes.
This also applies to the Seleucid Empire, as new characters receive a "Late" bodyguard unit unconditionally, whether the cataphract reforms have been triggered or not.

6) "Galatian Noble Cavalry" is armed with javelins and able to use 'skirmish mode' in the new version of the beta (much like "Aspidophoroi"). However, the 'skirmish mode' on this unit seems to cause some problems if controlled by the AI, as it actually skirmishes with this heavy cavalry (in contrast to "Aspidophoroi", which seem to behave much more like heavy cavalry, although they have 'skirmish mode' available to them as well).

7) "Campanian Cavalry" received a big change of stats with the new version of the beta. Their attack was decreased to 8 (though they still appear to be armed with a Xyston (?)), their charge bonus was increased to 40. In Custom Battle, they still have "Bonus fighting cavalry", while in campaign this bonus is removed.

8) "Punic Cavalry" has a charge bonus of 27, while all Italian heavy cavalry units and "Celtiberian Heavy Cavalry" have a charge bonus of 40.

[Quinn Inuit]

Thank you. Moving all of these posts to a new thread was an excellent solution.

No problem.

Ok.
Is changing a city's name a problem in general then? That would be bad news for...

Nah, it's only a problem with some. These should be mostly fine.

This list of issues indicates an impressive knowledge of the ancient world. Some of these were obvious errors in retrospect, but there's some obscure stuff in here.

Part 1: CAMPAIGN MAP (continued)

This part will focus on geographical errors.

I'm aware this is potentially shaky ground. And that there is a trade-off between gameplay and perfect realism. Also, the campaign map does by far more right than wrong.

Further, I can imagine that these kind of problems might not be your top priority and that you would not want to go back and mess around with the map too much. All I can hope for is that you take an honest look at these points and maybe reply which of these can actually be taken care of.

I'm working through them. This may take a bit. BTW, when I say something is fixed, that's in dev. It'll show up in the next beta.

That said, I'm going to address a few mistakes which really annoy me, because they could have been easily avoided in the first place. Some others aren't as blatantly stupid (sorry), but could still be found bothersome. Finally, there's a third category correction of which would be a nice bonus.
I'm going to start with mistakes of the first category and work my way down to points I consider less important or difficult to change.

1) Seleucia (Babylonia), Babylon (Tigris): the province names; Seleucia sits on the Tigris, Babylon on the Ephrates. => Seleucia (Tigris), Babylon (Babylonia)

2) Palma (Baliares): on the map, Palma is located on Ibiza; it's actually on Mallorca (the biggest island, nicely presented on the campaing map) => change location or change city name

3) Maronia (Maronia): that's just completely wrong; Maronia lies at the coast west of the river Hebros (which is also presented on the map) and not even close to the Gallipoli peninsula => change city name (maybe to Lysimacheia?), change province name (maybe to Chersonesos?)

Fixed, mostly with name-swapping.

4) Northern/Northeastern India:

• the map's Purushapura (Gandara) (Peshawar) is located on the eastern side of the Indus River; actually that's right where Taxila was
• the map's Taxila (Dheri) is clearly in the middle todays Punjab and not where it's supposed to be
• the map's Hydaspes province (city: Bhinmal) lies east of Punjab and the Indus region and therefore has no contact with the Hydaspes river at all, which flows through the Northwest of Punjab
• change names:
  
  • Purushapura (Gandara) => Taxila (Gandara);
  • Taxila (Dheri) => Sangala (?) (Hydaspes);
  • Bhinmal (Hydaspes) => Bhinmal (Thar?) (after the desert)
  
  

Are you sure about Peshawar and Taxila? I just took a look at Google Maps and I'm pretty happy with their locations. Admittedly, they're not dead-on, but the map strikes me as reasonably accurate there. Here's a link: https://www.google.com/maps/@33.858891,72.1968269,10z
You should be able to see both cities on the screen at the same time on that map.

I took your suggestion and renamed Hydaspes to Thar.

5) Abydos (Mysia): it should sit right at the coast, approximately where the olive oil symbol is on the map

6) Kartuba (Turdertania): it's location would be further east, still on the northern bank of that river, app. at the point just north of the horse symbol

7) Bylazora (Paionia): way too far north; it was actually close to the Axios river, in the southern part of the map's Paionia province; at the moment, its location would be somewhere in todays Kosovo or Serbia

Fixed.

8) the province Dacia inferior (city: Ratiara) lies south of the danube, while Dardania (city: Sucidava) lies north of that river => swap the province names (?)

Just swapped them. That seemed easiest. Also did some renaming.

9) Alexandria in Susiana (Characene): it could be moved closer to the river(s) and/or the gulf

10) Barbarikon (Lower Indus): the map shows it on the eastern instead of on the western side of the delta

I'm going to leave these as-is. Moving cities is a pain, and I think I had reasons for putting them where I did in the first place.

11) There is no way through the mountains from Alexandria in Arachosia (Arachosia) (Kandahar) to Alexandria_in_the_Caucasus (Drangiana) (near Kabul). Alexander went this way in 330/329 to reach Baktria, while Antiochos III went in the opposite direction during his "Anabasis". It would be really neat if the player could do the same in ExRM.

I like it! OK, done.

12) On the map, a direct path from Moudon (Helvetia) to Vesontio (Germania superior) is blocked by the Black Forest (north), the Jura Mountains (South), the Vosges Mountains (northwest) and the Rhine (in the middle).

Good point. Fixed it with river fords.

[Quinn Inuit]

Part 2: SELEUCID EMPIRE

1) With upgrading from colony building level 3 ("Hellenic city I") to colony building level 4 ("Hellenic city II") the player won't be able to recruit "Silver Shield Hypaspists" and "Podromoi" any longer, but access to recruiting "Thorakitai" will be granted (as a "reform"). The way I take it is that "Thorakitai" replace "Silver Shield Hypaspists", which is fine. Is it intended to be like that? Is losing the ability to recruit "Podromoi" intended?

That's correct. I'll modify the thorakitai unit text to make that explicit. The loss of the ability to recruit prodromoi was unintended, and I've corrected it.

2) just a minor point: the horse skins of several units don't seem to be fitting. For this, I'm looking at the pictures in the post "Government and Reforms" in your Documentation thread.

• Early bodyguard unit's horses are of the half armoured type (the one you can see in the bottom left picture)
• Late bodyguard unit's horses wear a leopard's fur (top left picture)
• "Seleucid cataphracts" have the same horses as the Median Agema, the fully armoured type (bottom right picture)

Since I'm in favor of a little variety, I'd like the late bodyguard to stay as it is, whereas the early bodyguard could get the same horses the late type has right now (those units' riders have different skins) and the cataphracts could get the half armoured type of horse. But that might not reflect the improved armor on the late bodyguard... I'd just like the late bodyguard to not look exactly the same as a "Seleucid cataphracts" unit Anyway, that's just my two cents...

Hmmm...I'm trying to figure out what's intentional here and what's an error on my part.
The Seleucid cats are definitely supposed to have the same horse as the Median Agema.
Early bodyguards are supposed to look like the upper left picture.
Late bodyguards are supposed to look like the bottom left picture.

Is that what you're seeing?

3) Seleucid cataphract reforms:

• conditions for receiving the trait "BeatenByCats" (source: "export_descr_character_traits.txt"): I know it makes sense, but to me it was quite counter-intuitive when I discovered losing to which factions would trigger the trait, especially in case of Barbarian Tribes (and Baktria to a smaller degree). In the end, it comes down to "suffer a defeat in the Far East!" (or, in case of Barbarians and 'Ippeidemos, anywhere on the map!). Maybe it would make sense to include the Sarmatians as well, although they don't have much initial contact with the Seleucids. -- I'm more concerned about the fact that only a loss in an open field battle will trigger the trait. I myself tried to trigger the reform vs. Parthia, but the AI was very reluctant to face an army on open ground. In the end, I lost my patience after I had (deliberately) lost a siege attack (with enough soldiers and enough casualties) and gave the trait to a general via the console (reform works fine after that; I did not come around to test it with Baktria, which is unfortunate looking back from today). I really don't like the reform to be restricted to open field battles and feel like including siege battles and ambushes would largely decrease potential frustration for the player. I think this is the line that matters in the script (example: small unit size, vs. 'Ippeidemos):
  Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

  Trigger seleucids_get_owned1as
  WhenToTest PostBattle
  
  Condition IsGeneral
  and not WonBattle
  and I_ConflictType Normal
  and FactionType seleucid
  and GeneralFoughtFaction numidia
  and NumFriendsInBattle > 240
  and Trait BeatenByCats < 1
  and Trait AlreadyBeatenByCats < 1
  and Trait Unit_Size_Small >= 1
  and PercentageOfArmyKilled > 31
  
  Affects BeatenByCats 1 Chance 100
  The other ConflictTypes are (at least I think so): I_ConflictType Siege ; I_ConflictType SuccessfulAmbush
• THIS ALSO APPLIES TO THE FOLLOWING REFORMS: Machimoi Reforms for Egypt; Beaten by Horse Archers for Sarmatia and Parthia; Beaten by Romans for Pontus and Armenia

*facepalm* I completely did not intend that. I'm going to comment those lines out in all of those places (macros FTW!). As for the barb and horse superfactions, I had to leave those in because it could include Seleucid losses to the Saka, Albanians, etc. I added the Sarmatians, too.

• disappearing recruitment options from client state buildings ("Autonomia II"):
  
  • Van (Armenia): after the Seleucid cataphract reform, "Albanian cataphracts" are still recruitable here, while Armenian Noble Cavalry is not (are these armoured horse archers btw?)
  • Mtskheta (Caucasian Iberia): "Iberian cataphracts" are still recruitable
  
  

Already fixed in dev.

Apropos reforms, before I forget, the Carthaginian and Suebi reforms have the same year/turn number condition as the Polybian reforms.

Good catch. I commented those lines out. (I almost never delete things, since I might need them later. You've probably noticed that in the code by now. Speaking of the code, have you found the bilingual elephant-related pun yet?)

[Quinn Inuit]

Part 3: BAKTRIA

1) How is it possible to recruit "Baktrian Hetairoi Archers" (not the bodyguard unit but the regular heavy cav with 40 men)? If you right click on a colony building (level 3: "Hellenic city I"), they are listed under the recruitment options, but you cannot actually recruit them. "Baktrian Hetairoi" (without bows) are recruitable, but only in the homelands (Bactria, Oxiana, Ferghana (?)).

Those are a reform unit, tied to the Roman Marian Reforms because we couldn't use the normal reforms process (like we'd done for the Seleucids), thought I don't remember why we couldn't now. I've added some text to the unit description to that effect.

As for the early ones, we tied those to where the Thessalians probably settled down, partly to compensate for how cool they are. (See below.)

2) "Baktrian Hetairoi", which were "Thessalian Cavalry" in the old version of the beta, have the same unit card picture and recruitment icon as Thessalian cav. That's nothing big, just slightly confusing.

Sorry. There is some explanatory text in the unit, FWIW.

However, in contrast to the Thessalians, they now come with an added "Bonus fighting cavalry" in their stats. This makes them considerably better compared to other Hetairoi cavalry units, because "Baktrian Hetairoi" have not only the highest defense value (23) of all Hetairoi units, but also come with the new charge bonus of 40, which none of the other Hetairoi have (including Seleucid lancers/cataphracts, Molossian Agema), while sporting the "Bonus fighting cavalry" like the other Hetairoi.

They were intended to be some of the best cavalry out there, combining the Thessalian and Alexandrian traditions while living in cavalry heaven. Do you think that makes them overpowered, though?

To add a more general note here: Increasing the charge bonus to 40 was a good decision. Heavy cavalry units that have it now usually strike about 10 kills on the charge. Still, (heavy) cavalry is no 'killing machine' by any means, but I think it does its job way better than before. Anyway, not all heavy cavalry units have the new charge bonus, so there are some considerable incosistencies with cavalry stats, like the one described above (I'll talk about a few others in detail in Part 4).
In the old version of the beta, a charge bonus of 27 was the highest value. But in contrast to the new value of 40, it did not have a clear effect on the battlefield. From my experience, units with a charge bonus of 27 score only 2 to 3 kills--if at all. For Hetairoi units, which generally kept their charge boni of 27, this means that they now have a considerably weaker charge than other heavy cavalry.

Interesting. Would you recommend moving all high-tier heavy shock cavalry to a bonus of 40, then? We want them to be genuinely devastating. (Maybe 30 for Tier 3, 35 for Tier 4, and 40 for Tier 5.)

If we do so, would that make the Bactrian Early Hetairoi less overpowered, if you answered yes to that previously?

3) Out of the Baktrian homelands, the faction's recruitment options from its colony buildings are quite weak (I'm not relating to India here). A colony building of level 1 ("Established Hellenic (Faction) Colony"; I label "Initial Colonization" as level 0 to keep things consistent ) has no recruitment options at all. At a level 2 building ("Hellenic settlement") the player can only recruit "Pezoi" (the weakest pikemen unit) and "Greek Thureophoroi". A level 3 building ("Hellenic city I") adds the other 2 pikemen units and "Hypaspistai". If a region gives access to heavy cavalry, "Baktrian Hetairoi Archers" are the sole option (-> 1) ).
The Baktrian roster in Custom Battle includes (standard/Greek) Peltasts. Maybe it would be possible to enable the recruitment of (Greek) Peltasts in campaign, too. They would make up for losing access to "Baktrian skirmishers" when out of their homelands and give at least one recruitment option to a colony building level 1. In comparison, other hellenistic factions can recruit Peltasts, Akontistai and Podromoi (?) from an "Established Hellenic (Faction) Colony". Why shouldn't Baktria like the other factions make use of conquered and/or relocated colonies of hellenic settlers, when it expands to the west?!

Excellent point. Darn, Bactria's recruitment is such a tangle. This is going to be difficult to make work.
...
OK, fixed it. More or less. Bactrian colony buildings now have the full Greek AOR. Also, they can make use of Seleucid colony buildings to recruit, and the Seleucids can make similar, but more limited, use of Bactrian buildings. Because of the building browser bug, I can't attach a minimum faction building requirement to those. It was the only way I could ensure the Bactrians would be able to recruit from colony buildings in Seleucid areas, though.

[Quinn Inuit]

Part 4: MISCELLANEOUS ISSUES

1) In Custom Battle, the "Oscan veteran infantry" has the same skin as "Samnite light infantry". Apparently, this does not apply to the campaign, here "Oscan veteran infantry" displays its proper skin on the battle map.

Oops. Fixed.

2) In Custom Battle, "Polybian Principes" and "Italic Principes" have the same skin, namely the "Polybian Principes" one.

Ah hah! I forgot to make the latter a merc unit for skin purposes. (It won't actually be a merc in-game.) Fixed.

3) "Caetrati Falcata": On the battle map, this unit's weapons are messed up. The men wield their javelins by default, switch to their swords and throw them instead of javelins, while fighting with javelins in melee.

Ugh. And I don't have anything to fix that with. Fortunately, that's one of the few units I have a spare for, so I switched to that. Maybe I can get somebody to fix the RTR VII model I'm using at some point.

4) The Numidian type bodyguard unit of 'Ippeidemos (and, oddly, available to the Galatians in Custom Battle) is called "Unlocalised Placement Text" and has no unit description.

Fixed.

6) "Galatian Noble Cavalry" is armed with javelins and able to use 'skirmish mode' in the new version of the beta (much like "Aspidophoroi"). However, the 'skirmish mode' on this unit seems to cause some problems if controlled by the AI, as it actually skirmishes with this heavy cavalry (in contrast to "Aspidophoroi", which seem to behave much more like heavy cavalry, although they have 'skirmish mode' available to them as well).

Ack! I hate it when it does that with my heavy cav.
OK, I just went through every instance of class = missile in the EDU and corrected a bunch. That should take care of that problem.

7) "Campanian Cavalry" received a big change of stats with the new version of the beta. Their attack was decreased to 8 (though they still appear to be armed with a Xyston (?)), their charge bonus was increased to 40. In Custom Battle, they still have "Bonus fighting cavalry", while in campaign this bonus is removed.

8) "Punic Cavalry" has a charge bonus of 27, while all Italian heavy cavalry units and "Celtiberian Heavy Cavalry" have a charge bonus of 40.

I think I dropped the Campanians one tier, but I don't think there's been a consistent handling of the charge bonus. (The cav bonus was simply an error and has been corrected.) What did you think of my proposed solution above for the charge bonuses for heavy cavalry?


I am seriously impressed with all of this. The level of detail here top-notch. May I add your name to the credits in some fashion? Simply listing you as a beta tester doesn't do justice to the level of work you've put in here.



-------------------

5) If characters of a faction with various types of bodyguard units come of age or enter the game by marriage or adoption, they all receive the same type of bodyguard unit. Accordingly, there will only be "Gallic Warlord" units (for Barbarian Tribes) and "Scythian General" units (for 'Ippeidemos) left on the map, from Iberia to India, from Numidia to Jaxartes.
This also applies to the Seleucid Empire, as new characters receive a "Late" bodyguard unit unconditionally, whether the cataphract reforms have been triggered or not.

Pulled out for special comment.

I'm having a devil of a time with this and have been since the first beta. I'm thinking I'm going to have turn the Marian Reforms back on in-game. I can't seem to get the bodyguard upgrade triggers to work properly. Does anyone have any suggestions?

[Archesel]

3) "Caetrati Falcata": On the battle map, this unit's weapons are messed up. The men wield their javelins by default, switch to their swords and throw them instead of javelins, while fighting with javelins in melee.

Maybe edit the EDU, and swap both weapons lines...If that doesn't work, replace it with an old RTRPE model?

[sere]

Wow.

Ok, I'll try to reply to all significant points. Where I don't bring up again some of the fixes you've already made, my agreement and, even more so, appreciation is implied. Overall, you really did a stellar job with all the changes you made so far!

I'm going to post Part 5 tomorrow (if possible). Otherwise, I'll not be able to post here for the rest of the week after wednesday.

-> Part 1.2

BTW, when I say something is fixed, that's in dev. It'll show up in the next beta.

Looking forward to the next release!

-> 4)

Are you sure about Peshawar and Taxila? I just took a look at Google Maps and I'm pretty happy with their locations. Admittedly, they're not dead-on, but the map strikes me as reasonably accurate there. Here's a link: https://www.google.com/maps/@33.858891,72.1968269,10z
You should be able to see both cities on the screen at the same time on that map.

My whole point is based on my understanding of the campaign map. From Northwest to Southeast: You can see that river coming down from the valley where Alexandria/Caucasus is. I supposed it to be the Kabul river. It flows into the Indus. Further Southeast/East come the big rivers of Punjab: Jhelum (Hydaspes), Chenab, Ravi, Beas (Hyphasis), Sutlej (Zarandros). Please note that the Beas (Hyphasis) did not flow into the Sutlej (Zarandros) that far north, until a dam project lead to a connection of the rivers in the 1970s.
On the campaign map, Purushapura is located east of the point where the Kabul river flows into the Indus, on the eastern bank of the Indus. That's nowhere near the location of Peshawar, as clearly visible on your google link. Actually, it's just about where Taxila would be, close to Islamabad. On the google map, if you zoom out a bit, you can see the rivers of Punjab flowing to the Southeast of Taxila/Islamabad, with the Jhelum (Hydaspes) coming first. So, Taxila lies between the Indus and Punjab.
The Taxila of the campaign map is located between the 2nd (Chenab) and 3rd (Ravi) river in Punjab. That cannot be the actual Taxila to my understanding.
I hope I was able to clearly express my point. I'm no native speaker and I'm absolutely not used to writing about geography. For sources, I mostly used historical atlases. Another interesting point I want to add in that regard: It's pointed out in the books that, back then, the rivers in India, esp. the Indus, ran through different riverbeds than today. Also, the coastline of the Persian Gulf in Mesopotamia was more to the Northwest, the "Shatt Al-Arab" wasn't quite as long as today (around 1800 BC, Ur on the Euphrates even was a port city and the two rivers had different mouths!).

-> 9), 10)

I'm going to leave these as-is. Moving cities is a pain, and I think I had reasons for putting them where I did in the first place.

Ok, I wasn't sure about these 100%, too. Plus, it's really not a huge deal.

-> 11), 12)

I like it! OK, done.

Good point. Fixed it with river fords.

You are awesome


-> Part 2

-> 2)

The Seleucid cats are definitely supposed to have the same horse as the Median Agema.
Early bodyguards are supposed to look like the upper left picture.
Late bodyguards are supposed to look like the bottom left picture.

Is that what you're seeing?

1st: Ok. 2nd & 3rd: the riders are correct, the horses are not. Early bodyguard has the Late one's horse and the other way round.

-> 3)

I'm going to comment those lines out in all of those places (macros FTW!).

Does this mean that you took care of the other reforms, too, not only the Seleucid's?

As for the barb and horse superfactions, I had to leave those in because it could include Seleucid losses to the Saka, Albanians, etc.

I guessed that, but it's imperfect because of, well, superfactions... and I'm totally cool with it (as I don't see any better solution)
As for the (not) disappearing units: I cannot say if these are all the wrong recruitment options, as I just haven't built client state buildings in every relevant city.

Speaking of the code, have you found the bilingual elephant-related pun yet?

Uhm...


-> Part 3

-> 1)

Those are a reform unit, tied to the Roman Marian Reforms because we couldn't use the normal reforms process (like we'd done for the Seleucids), thought I don't remember why we couldn't now. I've added some text to the unit description to that effect.

I just looked it up in the script. If the AI controls Rome, the player probably would have to wait until turn #600 (Winter, 131 BC). That is pretty long. From my experience, tying it to the Polybian Reforms would make more sense (and fun!): Automatic Reform for the AI takes place in turn #168 (238 BC), around the same time the AI usually managed to conquer the needed settlements, so in the end I was never even sure if the Polybian Reforms were triggered automatically or not. Then again, I played in Medium; maybe the AI moves faster and/or handles Rome better in a higher difficulty setting.
But, again, tying it to the Marian Reform makes for a way too long wait, in my opinion!

-> heavy cavalry

Interesting. Would you recommend moving all high-tier heavy shock cavalry to a bonus of 40, then? We want them to be genuinely devastating. (Maybe 30 for Tier 3, 35 for Tier 4, and 40 for Tier 5.)

If we do so, would that make the Bactrian Early Hetairoi less overpowered, if you answered yes to that previously?

Yes, high-tier cav should definitely have a devastating charge bonus. I like the idea of a differentiation in grades, too. But, since a value of 27--as I pointed out--has no significant effect from my experiences, I'd rather not start at 30 for even the lowest tier, but maybe a bit higher. Maybe it could even increase exponentially (= not linear): 32 - 36 - 42
My biggest concern, though, is with consistency. As I said, the Hetairoi type units and Punic Cavalry haven't been changed in the current (downloadable) version (plus an unknown number of other units?!). Then there are some units like Aspidophoroi or Galatian Noble Cavalry (and many cataphract archers) that have odd boni of 8 or something... Light cavalry units have boni between 10 and 15 from what I can remember...
In general, I'd argue for an increase of all cavalry charge bonus values (relative to the units' strengths).
Btw, is the charge bonus intended to depend more on the mass of the unit (horse+rider, armour) or the weapon (sword/maze; spear; lance)?

Further, there's the related topic of infantry charge bonus. As from a general perspective, I'd argue for an overall increase of these, too, just because they don't seem to have much of an effect at the moment, as well.
I enjoy the longer, more drawn out fights, although sometimes it feels like it takes an unrealistically long zime to kill an enemy soldier, especially if the units in combat have similarly low stats. This is balanced by the role that morale plays in ending (winning) fights, which really works well. Then again, I'd like to see charges play a more important role, as to give an initial number of kills when combat starts, before nothing much happens until a "morale moment" kicks in and the fight is ended. Charges would ideally not be decisive, but could give a tendency to a fight. That's my personal point of view, anyway

I'll address a few more issues with, and ideas about, infantry and combat in Part 5!

OK, fixed it. More or less. Bactrian colony buildings now have the full Greek AOR. Also, they can make use of Seleucid colony buildings to recruit, and the Seleucids can make similar, but more limited, use of Bactrian buildings. Because of the building browser bug, I can't attach a minimum faction building requirement to those. It was the only way I could ensure the Bactrians would be able to recruit from colony buildings in Seleucid areas, though.

Sounds very interesting.


-> Part 4

-> 5)

I'm having a devil of a time with this and have been since the first beta. I'm thinking I'm going to have turn the Marian Reforms back on in-game. I can't seem to get the bodyguard upgrade triggers to work properly. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Same as above, I think tying this to the Marian Reforms would not be a very good idea. By the time these trigger for the AI, the player probably could have triggered the Seleucid cataphract reforms 3 times, if he hadn't wiped out Parthia and Baktria and conquered the whole (Far) East 400 turns earlier
Is there really no way to tie the bodyguard upgrade to the Seleucid cataphract reforms?
If no, I'd say again that the (automatically triggered) Polybian Reforms would be a more feasible timeframe.

I am seriously impressed with all of this. The level of detail here top-notch. May I add your name to the credits in some fashion? Simply listing you as a beta tester doesn't do justice to the level of work you've put in here.

Do whatever you want I just want to see a finished product in the forseeable/near future and I am willing to contribute to assure the best possible quality in combination with (hopefully) positive effects on developing time!

With regards to your possible expectations to my testing:
Writing these posts takes an awfully long time, more than I had imagined when I started. Posting in this thread has effectively substituted for actually playing the game. Additionally, I don't have the nerve to play extensively at the moment, anyway--too much going on elsewhere. So I probably won't be pushing my campaigns much further, what means that I won't discover many more issues like I posted here. At least not on this level of detail. Furthermore, it would take a great amount of time (a couple of months) to get this far with another major campaign.
But this does not mean that I am going to stop playtesting at all. I already have some ideas (see below). I just won't start any new campaigns before at least the next version of the beta is released. With that, I plan to play a Suebi campaign (less time per turn is needed there; want to test the reforms). For now, I thought about making a list of units with missing sound files, based on Custom Battle. Would that be helpful?

[sere]

Part 5: SUGGESTIONS FOR GAMEPLAY

As said earlier, this post will contain some ideas about how the game might be further improved. These reflect my own perspective on the game, which is limited and most likely biased. Maybe you still find some useful points...

1) I find the "Tribus Marcomanni" province (city: Campus Iazyges) to be too big compared to the surrounding provinces. It is not located that far out to the periphery of the map like provinces of equal size. Could it be split into two?

2) For Pontus, owning Bhinmal (Hydaspes/Thar) is required in order to win the campaign. Carthage must conquer Maketa (Ommana). These seem a little bit out of place compared to the victory conditions of other factions, since their required provinces are located in a more 'natural' zone of possible expansion.
Further, none of the Greek colonies on the northern shore of the Black Sea have to be conquered by Pontus for a victory. That's a miss, imho.

3) In the currently downloadable version of the beta, you already made some changes to province ownership in Iberia and Gaul at start of the game. Some settlements of 'Ippeidemos and the Barbarian Tribes lacked default garrisons (I guess you already made more changes there).
While looking at these, the small flags displayed by 'Ippeidemos settlements without garrison were hardly visible, as they have some sort of brownish colour, which blends in with the surrounding landscape and differs greatly from the usual 'Ippeidemos colour scheme.

4) Building options for the 'Ippeidemos seem to be very limited. All their default settlements have the same government building ("Tribal Overlords"), which is part of the client state building tree from my understanding. Are they even able to build colony buildings? Further, they can only construct one type of temple and small temple (both "to Eshmun"/ Fun (?)).
Are they intended to be limited like that? The Barbarian Tribes seem to have a larger number of options...

5) I always (as well while playing the vanilla) wondered why the Greek factions are unable to build +5 farms like the Romans and Carthaginians. It would be neat to give this option to the Seleucids and the Ptolemaic Empire, as it would represent the large royal estates of the Seleucids and the general agricultural potence of Egypt likewise. Contra: Game balance?!
(Not sure, if the Ptollies already have that option, since the faction is not "Greek"...)

6) The upkeep cost of Syrian units (Syrian infantry, Syrian archers, Syrian horse archers), which are recruitable from a client state building in Syria, seems to be too high considering their stats. Comparable units have significant lower upkeep. Why should anyone recruit these guys, as their stats are pretty weak anyway?

7) On a broader scale, Italian and Carthaginian/North African units seem to have generally higher upkeep costs than comparable units (stats, role) in the Greek world/Eastern Mediterranean. Seemed a bit unfair to me at first look... but maybe it makes sense?

8) I've already mentioned infantry charge boni in the previous post. Additionally, a unit's stamina tends to play a big role in combat. Unfortunately, I have no insight on how the stamina mechanics actually work; all the average player can see is the "Good stamina" and "Very good stamina" traits in the unit cards. In that regard--and from my limited understanding--there appear to be inconsistencies between a number of units. I would not want every unit to have "Good stamina", but I think having these traits would make for a crucial characteristic of elite units in this particular combat system of ExRM.

• For example, Silver Shield Pikemen have "Good stamina", while all other elite pike units do not have a stamina trait, with the exception of Baktrian Agema. Although Silver Shields have only 14 attack to the usual 16 of elite, I'd always prefer Silver Shields because of their "Good stamina". They cost ~250 less upkeep, too, what makes them even more effective. In contrast, the mid-tier pike units (which I take for mercenaries rather than veterans; 1400 upkeep, wtf?! that's considerably more than every elite pike unit! Btw, the AI loves to recruit those 1400-upkeep pikes ) usually come with "Good stamina". I think: the Agemas of Egypt and Epirus and the Makedonian elite need to have this trait!
• Galatian Swordsmen have no such trait, their upkeep is ~1100, their stats resemble (are shlightly better than(?)) Polybian Principes, Thorakitai, ambactii ...

[Quinn Inuit]

Maybe edit the EDU, and swap both weapons lines...If that doesn't work, replace it with an old RTRPE model?

Actually, I found an Algaman/Milner version that I think will work.

Wow.

Ok, I'll try to reply to all significant points. Where I don't bring up again some of the fixes you've already made, my agreement and, even more so, appreciation is implied. Overall, you really did a stellar job with all the changes you made so far!

Thanks!

I'm going to post Part 5 tomorrow (if possible). Otherwise, I'll not be able to post here for the rest of the week after wednesday.

Understood. I had a crazy busy week, too.

-> 4)

My whole point is based on my understanding of the campaign map. From Northwest to Southeast: You can see that river coming down from the valley where Alexandria/Caucasus is. I supposed it to be the Kabul river. It flows into the Indus. Further Southeast/East come the big rivers of Punjab: Jhelum (Hydaspes), Chenab, Ravi, Beas (Hyphasis), Sutlej (Zarandros). Please note that the Beas (Hyphasis) did not flow into the Sutlej (Zarandros) that far north, until a dam project lead to a connection of the rivers in the 1970s.
On the campaign map, Purushapura is located east of the point where the Kabul river flows into the Indus, on the eastern bank of the Indus. That's nowhere near the location of Peshawar, as clearly visible on your google link. Actually, it's just about where Taxila would be, close to Islamabad. On the google map, if you zoom out a bit, you can see the rivers of Punjab flowing to the Southeast of Taxila/Islamabad, with the Jhelum (Hydaspes) coming first. So, Taxila lies between the Indus and Punjab.
The Taxila of the campaign map is located between the 2nd (Chenab) and 3rd (Ravi) river in Punjab. That cannot be the actual Taxila to my understanding.
I hope I was able to clearly express my point. I'm no native speaker and I'm absolutely not used to writing about geography. For sources, I mostly used historical atlases. Another interesting point I want to add in that regard: It's pointed out in the books that, back then, the rivers in India, esp. the Indus, ran through different riverbeds than today. Also, the coastline of the Persian Gulf in Mesopotamia was more to the Northwest, the "Shatt Al-Arab" wasn't quite as long as today (around 1800 BC, Ur on the Euphrates even was a port city and the two rivers had different mouths!).

We've done our best to replicate ancient coastlines where possible (Hispania and Macedonia being examples, and I think the Shatt Al-Arab, too), but that's a difficult and often moving target.

No, your English is quite good, and after looking over the campaign map and the Google Maps link again I think I see what you mean here now.

All right, let's figure out how to fix this. Here's the thing: those cities were placed not just for accuracy, but to guide the AI. If I move them as you're suggesting, I think it will screw up pathfinding to the rest of India. What can I do to not have to move them much and rename them? For instance, it looks like we could rename Purushupura to Taxila and do OK without moving it. What can we put roughly where Taxila is now in its place? I don't want to get much close to current Purushupura, but otherwise I think we can get away with a move of 5-10 spaces in any direction.

-> 9), 10)

Ok, I wasn't sure about these 100%, too. Plus, it's really not a huge deal.

OK, works for me.

-> 11), 12)

You are awesome

Thanks!

-> Part 2

-> 2)

1st: Ok. 2nd & 3rd: the riders are correct, the horses are not. Early bodyguard has the Late one's horse and the other way round.

OK, I think I've fixed it.

-> 3)

Does this mean that you took care of the other reforms, too, not only the Seleucid's?

That's what I attempted to do and hopefully succeeded at.

Uhm...

Heh, keep your eyes open, then. I think it's in the EDB somewhere.

-> Part 3

-> 1)

I just looked it up in the script. If the AI controls Rome, the player probably would have to wait until turn #600 (Winter, 131 BC). That is pretty long. From my experience, tying it to the Polybian Reforms would make more sense (and fun!): Automatic Reform for the AI takes place in turn #168 (238 BC), around the same time the AI usually managed to conquer the needed settlements, so in the end I was never even sure if the Polybian Reforms were triggered automatically or not. Then again, I played in Medium; maybe the AI moves faster and/or handles Rome better in a higher difficulty setting.
But, again, tying it to the Marian Reform makes for a way too long wait, in my opinion!

That's reasonable. By that point, the generation of actual Thessalians would have passed away, and their kids, too, probably. OK, I'll move that code to the Polybian reforms.

-> heavy cavalry

Yes, high-tier cav should definitely have a devastating charge bonus. I like the idea of a differentiation in grades, too. But, since a value of 27--as I pointed out--has no significant effect from my experiences, I'd rather not start at 30 for even the lowest tier, but maybe a bit higher. Maybe it could even increase exponentially (= not linear): 32 - 36 - 42
My biggest concern, though, is with consistency. As I said, the Hetairoi type units and Punic Cavalry haven't been changed in the current (downloadable) version (plus an unknown number of other units?!). Then there are some units like Aspidophoroi or Galatian Noble Cavalry (and many cataphract archers) that have odd boni of 8 or something... Light cavalry units have boni between 10 and 15 from what I can remember...
In general, I'd argue for an increase of all cavalry charge bonus values (relative to the units' strengths).
Btw, is the charge bonus intended to depend more on the mass of the unit (horse+rider, armour) or the weapon (sword/maze; spear; lance)?

Charge bonus depends on a combination of the weapon (sword/other melee, spear, lance, with much higher bonuses for the last two) and tier. Whether the unit is considered medium or heavy cavalry controls whether the unit gets power_charge.

Further, there's the related topic of infantry charge bonus. As from a general perspective, I'd argue for an overall increase of these, too, just because they don't seem to have much of an effect at the moment, as well.
I enjoy the longer, more drawn out fights, although sometimes it feels like it takes an unrealistically long zime to kill an enemy soldier, especially if the units in combat have similarly low stats. This is balanced by the role that morale plays in ending (winning) fights, which really works well. Then again, I'd like to see charges play a more important role, as to give an initial number of kills when combat starts, before nothing much happens until a "morale moment" kicks in and the fight is ended. Charges would ideally not be decisive, but could give a tendency to a fight. That's my personal point of view, anyway

I'll address a few more issues with, and ideas about, infantry and combat in Part 5!

That's a reasonable position. I'll try to give heavy infantry a charge comparable to light missile cavalry.

You're right that we we tried to set up battles so that morale was the decisive factor. In the vast majority of ancient battles I studied, you have very few casualties on either side till one army breaks, at which point the slaughter began. That's what makes the Roman army at Carrhae so amazing. Very few other armies (that were more than a few thousand picked troops) would have remained so disciplined.


I've moved to the following charge bonus setup:

Add 4x each unit's Tier value to the number below for the final value.  That adds up fast, which is why these values might seem low.  This way, the quality of the unit is reflected in a non-trivial way in the charge bonus.

Heavy infantry = 4 + (2xTier) (no other multiplier)

Light missile/sword/etc. cavalry = 0
Light spear cavalry = 5
Light lance cavalry = 10

Medium missile/sword/etc. cavalry = 10
Medium spear cavalry = 15
Medium lance cavalry = 20

Heavy missile/sword/etc. cavalry = 15
Heavy spear cavalry = 20
Heavy lance cavalry = 25

This gave most units a boost to their charge stats. A lot of the Tier 3 units are only in the 30s, but most tier 4 units are >35. I think it's much more rational now, and the different weapon types really matter.

Sounds very interesting.

Thanks. I hope it works.

-> Part 4

-> 5)

Same as above, I think tying this to the Marian Reforms would not be a very good idea. By the time these trigger for the AI, the player probably could have triggered the Seleucid cataphract reforms 3 times, if he hadn't wiped out Parthia and Baktria and conquered the whole (Far) East 400 turns earlier
Is there really no way to tie the bodyguard upgrade to the Seleucid cataphract reforms?
If no, I'd say again that the (automatically triggered) Polybian Reforms would be a more feasible timeframe.

That's not exactly the problem. The thing is, the upgrade seems to be triggered from the beginning of the game.

Do whatever you want I just want to see a finished product in the forseeable/near future and I am willing to contribute to assure the best possible quality in combination with (hopefully) positive effects on developing time!

OK. Let me know if you want to actually code anything, though, and I'll either send you a dev file or avoid working on it for a time so you can make changes.

With regards to your possible expectations to my testing:
Writing these posts takes an awfully long time, more than I had imagined when I started. Posting in this thread has effectively substituted for actually playing the game. Additionally, I don't have the nerve to play extensively at the moment, anyway--too much going on elsewhere. So I probably won't be pushing my campaigns much further, what means that I won't discover many more issues like I posted here. At least not on this level of detail. Furthermore, it would take a great amount of time (a couple of months) to get this far with another major campaign.
But this does not mean that I am going to stop playtesting at all. I already have some ideas (see below). I just won't start any new campaigns before at least the next version of the beta is released. With that, I plan to play a Suebi campaign (less time per turn is needed there; want to test the reforms). For now, I thought about making a list of units with missing sound files, based on Custom Battle. Would that be helpful?

Yes, all of those would be helpful, but please hold off on the sound files till the next beta is released. You inspired me to fix a metric ton of them tonight.

I totally understand that these posts are time-consuming. This level of detail would have to be. I appreciate whatever time you can put into this.

Part 5: SUGGESTIONS FOR GAMEPLAY

As said earlier, this post will contain some ideas about how the game might be further improved. These reflect my own perspective on the game, which is limited and most likely biased. Maybe you still find some useful points...

1) I find the "Tribus Marcomanni" province (city: Campus Iazyges) to be too big compared to the surrounding provinces. It is not located that far out to the periphery of the map like provinces of equal size. Could it be split into two?

Nope, sorry, we're out of region spots. I'd love to otherwise.

2) For Pontus, owning Bhinmal (Hydaspes/Thar) is required in order to win the campaign. Carthage must conquer Maketa (Ommana). These seem a little bit out of place compared to the victory conditions of other factions, since their required provinces are located in a more 'natural' zone of possible expansion.
Further, none of the Greek colonies on the northern shore of the Black Sea have to be conquered by Pontus for a victory. That's a miss, imho.

Oops. Those are probably relics of where those provinces used to be before I redid the map in v4. Fixed.

3) In the currently downloadable version of the beta, you already made some changes to province ownership in Iberia and Gaul at start of the game. Some settlements of 'Ippeidemos and the Barbarian Tribes lacked default garrisons (I guess you already made more changes there).
While looking at these, the small flags displayed by 'Ippeidemos settlements without garrison were hardly visible, as they have some sort of brownish colour, which blends in with the surrounding landscape and differs greatly from the usual 'Ippeidemos colour scheme.

I'm not sure I can fix that. I don't know how to edit the files in which that logo is stored.

4) Building options for the 'Ippeidemos seem to be very limited. All their default settlements have the same government building ("Tribal Overlords"), which is part of the client state building tree from my understanding. Are they even able to build colony buildings? Further, they can only construct one type of temple and small temple (both "to Eshmun"/ Fun (?)).
Are they intended to be limited like that? The Barbarian Tribes seem to have a larger number of options...

Nope, the 'Ippeidemos are intentionally limited, mainly because they're such a huge variety of factions. I wanted to restrict them to AOR units.

That said, the temples thing was an oversight. I gave them their Numidian temples back. I had to choose something, so I decided to go for the original. It's as valid as any, and easier than the rest.

5) I always (as well while playing the vanilla) wondered why the Greek factions are unable to build +5 farms like the Romans and Carthaginians. It would be neat to give this option to the Seleucids and the Ptolemaic Empire, as it would represent the large royal estates of the Seleucids and the general agricultural potence of Egypt likewise. Contra: Game balance?!
(Not sure, if the Ptollies already have that option, since the faction is not "Greek"...)

Good question. I've added that in.

6) The upkeep cost of Syrian units (Syrian infantry, Syrian archers, Syrian horse archers), which are recruitable from a client state building in Syria, seems to be too high considering their stats. Comparable units have significant lower upkeep. Why should anyone recruit these guys, as their stats are pretty weak anyway?

I think I've fixed that a bit already in dev while doing other things, but bear in mind that they have axes.

7) On a broader scale, Italian and Carthaginian/North African units seem to have generally higher upkeep costs than comparable units (stats, role) in the Greek world/Eastern Mediterranean. Seemed a bit unfair to me at first look... but maybe it makes sense?

I'll review that. I corrected a couple of things while redoing the cav stats earlier. Italian units tend to be a bit more expensive because they've more armour, and some Carthaginian units are more expensive because they represent mercenaries or people who should be on the farm.

8) I've already mentioned infantry charge boni in the previous post. Additionally, a unit's stamina tends to play a big role in combat. Unfortunately, I have no insight on how the stamina mechanics actually work; all the average player can see is the "Good stamina" and "Very good stamina" traits in the unit cards. In that regard--and from my limited understanding--there appear to be inconsistencies between a number of units. I would not want every unit to have "Good stamina", but I think having these traits would make for a crucial characteristic of elite units in this particular combat system of ExRM.

• For example, Silver Shield Pikemen have "Good stamina", while all other elite pike units do not have a stamina trait, with the exception of Baktrian Agema. Although Silver Shields have only 14 attack to the usual 16 of elite, I'd always prefer Silver Shields because of their "Good stamina". They cost ~250 less upkeep, too, what makes them even more effective. In contrast, the mid-tier pike units (which I take for mercenaries rather than veterans; 1400 upkeep, wtf?! that's considerably more than every elite pike unit! Btw, the AI loves to recruit those 1400-upkeep pikes ) usually come with "Good stamina". I think: the Agemas of Egypt and Epirus and the Makedonian elite need to have this trait!
• Galatian Swordsmen have no such trait, their upkeep is ~1100, their stats resemble (are shlightly better than(?)) Polybian Principes, Thorakitai, ambactii ...

I think the stamina items represent the hardy/very_hardy traits. I should probably go through and standardize those.

The 1400 upkeep pike units represent recalled veterans. They're only one turn to recruit rather than two, but cost more because those people really should be working the farms. I agree that the AI likes them much too much. It just doesn't seem to take upkeep into account when recruiting, so I may need to front-load more of their cost and give them only a modestly higher upkeep.

As for the Galatian Swordsmen, they're so expensive because they're actually one of the best infantry units in the game. Compare their stats/costs to principes and you'll see what I mean. Do you think they're overpriced, though?

[sere]

All right, let's figure out how to fix this. Here's the thing: those cities were placed not just for accuracy, but to guide the AI. If I move them as you're suggesting, I think it will screw up pathfinding to the rest of India. What can I do to not have to move them much and rename them? For instance, it looks like we could rename Purushupura to Taxila and do OK without moving it. What can we put roughly where Taxila is now in its place? I don't want to get much close to current Purushupura, but otherwise I think we can get away with a move of 5-10 spaces in any direction.

Yes, Purushapura can be renamed to Taxila, that's just the best solution here I think.
I took another look at the campaign map to see where "Taxila" is precisely located and discovered that Punjab is lacking one river in the southeast, so either the Hyphasis (Beas) or the Zaradros (Sutlej) (I don't know which of them is intended to be displayed). As much as I'd like to just rename "Taxila", I cannot find a good replacement at its current location. My idea was to rename "Taxila" to Sagala (or Sangala), a fairly important city during that time period in Punjab. But the settlement would have to be moved between the next two rivers (Hydroatis and Hyphasis) to the southeast of its current location (-> red cross in the edited screenshot), while the fifth river, the Zaradros, would have to be edited in (-> blue line in the edited screenshot).

Hmmm...but would this be possible without complicating things too much?
Unfortunately, because of copyright, I cannot post a scan of the map I use as primary source.

This gave most units a boost to their charge stats. A lot of the Tier 3 units are only in the 30s, but most tier 4 units are >35. I think it's much more rational now, and the different weapon types really matter.

This is fantastic. I can't wait to see the new charge boni in action Plus, it looks like an easy and elegant way to keep the values consistent between units!

That's not exactly the problem. The thing is, the upgrade seems to be triggered from the beginning of the game.

Yes, yes. Looking back to my original post, this phenomenom was exactly my point. I got off the tracks in my last reply and was only relating to the Seleucids while still thinking of the Baktrian Hetairoi Archers reform.
I have no idea what's going on with the generals though ...

------------------------------------------

Nope, sorry, we're out of region spots. I'd love to otherwise.

Ok.

I'm not sure I can fix that. I don't know how to edit the files in which that logo is stored.

The 'invisible' 'Ippeidemos flag was just something I took notice of. Not really an issue.

Nope, the 'Ippeidemos are intentionally limited, mainly because they're such a huge variety of factions. I wanted to restrict them to AOR units.

Ok, but in the current state of the game they suffer a penalty on tax income from their client state buildings. This applies to all of their settlements, since they cannot build other government buildings. Maybe you could reduce the amount of income loss (not remove; it should represent a balance between colony and client state regions, imho)?

Good question. I've added that in.

I just looked it up, the Ptollies were already able to build +5 farms ("Great Estates"; has a nice description in its building card btw)
So for which faction(s) did you add in +5 farms? And are +5 farms available to them in Large cities (>12000), too, or in Huge cities (or in Minor cities)?

I think I've fixed that a bit already in dev while doing other things, but bear in mind that they have axes.

I'll review that. I corrected a couple of things while redoing the cav stats earlier. Italian units tend to be a bit more expensive because they've more armour, and some Carthaginian units are more expensive because they represent mercenaries or people who should be on the farm.

Oops, didn't knew about the axes. The differences in upkeep costs stroke me at first glance, but I didn't take a deeper look into it. So I'm sure many of these make sense...

The 1400 upkeep pike units represent recalled veterans. They're only one turn to recruit rather than two, but cost more because those people really should be working the farms. I agree that the AI likes them much too much. It just doesn't seem to take upkeep into account when recruiting, so I may need to front-load more of their cost and give them only a modestly higher upkeep.

Well, in principle, nothing's wrong with the AI recruiting a lot of good units as long as the upkeep costs would not cause them any trouble. Maybe it would be sufficient to decrease their upkeep, to a point below but close to the upkeep of an elite pike unit (around 900/950). So the bigger costs of recruiting recalled veterans would still be represented.

With regards to upkeep costs as a whole, I' figure that economic boni to the AI (e.g. because of difficulty settings) would have to be taken into account as well... But as of now, the AI seems to do a rather poor job at mustering its troops, as was discussed in another thread

------------------------------------------

OK. Let me know if you want to actually code anything, though, and I'll either send you a dev file or avoid working on it for a time so you can make changes.

As much as I'd like to give you more help, I'm afraid this would actually slow things down. I have no experience in coding/programming and I still feel like I don't understand the game very much. It would take a big amount of time until I'd be of any use in that regard. So I'd rather like to stick to playtesting and give any ideas and inspiration I can.
For that matter, it would be extremely helpful to see the next version of the beta to be released. You've already made so many changes compared to the current downloadable version that it's hard to keep track of them and give still relevant feedback at the same time

Sorry for doublepost! This was supposed to be part of my last post:
(No problem. I fixed it. {He-Man}I HAVE THE POOOOWWWWWEEERRRRR!{/He-Man} -Q.I.)

As for the Galatian Swordsmen, they're so expensive because they're actually one of the best infantry units in the game. Compare their stats/costs to principes and you'll see what I mean. Do you think they're overpriced, though?

They are absolutely not overpriced, their price is right where it should be! In my original post I only wanted to criticize the lack of a stamina trait.

[Quinn Inuit]

Yes, Purushapura can be renamed to Taxila, that's just the best solution here I think.
I took another look at the campaign map to see where "Taxila" is precisely located and discovered that Punjab is lacking one river in the southeast, so either the Hyphasis (Beas) or the Zaradros (Sutlej) (I don't know which of them is intended to be displayed). As much as I'd like to just rename "Taxila", I cannot find a good replacement at its current location. My idea was to rename "Taxila" to Sagala (or Sangala), a fairly important city during that time period in Punjab. But the settlement would have to be moved between the next two rivers (Hydroatis and Hyphasis) to the southeast of its current location (-> red cross in the edited screenshot), while the fifth river, the Zaradros, would have to be edited in (-> blue line in the edited screenshot).

Hmmm...but would this be possible without complicating things too much?
Unfortunately, because of copyright, I cannot post a scan of the map I use as primary source.

Actually, that's a fairly easy way to handle it, thanks. I've renamed the cities, that's not too far a move AI-wise for Taxila/Sagala, and adding the new river was a piece of cake with your map. Heh, now that you mention it, I think one of the cities on the old RTR 6.0/PE map was Sagala. That map was incredibly inaccurate in that part of the world (one of the main reasons I replaced it eventually), but it's funny that we have Sagala back now.

This is fantastic. I can't wait to see the new charge boni in action Plus, it looks like an easy and elegant way to keep the values consistent between units!

Thanks!

Yes, yes. Looking back to my original post, this phenomenom was exactly my point. I got off the tracks in my last reply and was only relating to the Seleucids while still thinking of the Baktrian Hetairoi Archers reform.
I have no idea what's going on with the generals though ...

I think it's because I've got the Marian Reforms turned on from the start of the game, even though I have a separate building that's for the bodyguard upgrade. *Sigh* Need to research this some more.
Sadly, nobody ever answered my question on that point: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...-general-units

Ok, but in the current state of the game they suffer a penalty on tax income from their client state buildings. This applies to all of their settlements, since they cannot build other government buildings. Maybe you could reduce the amount of income loss (not remove; it should represent a balance between colony and client state regions, imho)?

Ah hah! Thank you! I was wondering why the 'Ippeidemos economy was in the toilet even compared to the barb superfaction. You're right, I should help them. I've increased their tax bonus per region relative to the other superfactions by quite a bit. Even with the penalty now, they should be in decent shape.

I just looked it up, the Ptollies were already able to build +5 farms ("Great Estates"; has a nice description in its building card btw)
So for which faction(s) did you add in +5 farms? And are +5 farms available to them in Large cities (>12000), too, or in Huge cities (or in Minor cities)?

(Thanks! I'm not sure I wrote that, but I'm glad you like it.) I added them for "Greek" as a culture, so that should cover everybody who needs them. You'll only be able to get them in large cities. Basically, all I did to add them was add "Greek" to the factions line for that building and then call on Almighty Zeus to make sure they had a building card.

Oops, didn't knew about the axes. The differences in upkeep costs stroke me at first glance, but I didn't take a deeper look into it. So I'm sure many of these make sense...

OK. Let me know what you think. We tried to be consistent with these, but we used humans (us) instead of something automatic like Aradan's EDU generator, so errors may have crept in.

Well, in principle, nothing's wrong with the AI recruiting a lot of good units as long as the upkeep costs would not cause them any trouble. Maybe it would be sufficient to decrease their upkeep, to a point below but close to the upkeep of an elite pike unit (around 900/950). So the bigger costs of recruiting recalled veterans would still be represented.

With regards to upkeep costs as a whole, I' figure that economic boni to the AI (e.g. because of difficulty settings) would have to be taken into account as well... But as of now, the AI seems to do a rather poor job at mustering its troops, as was discussed in another thread

That seems like a good plan. I am genuinely worried about what the upkeep of those units is doing to the AI, so I've reduced it to 950 and increased the cost to about 3600. That should give any player pause before recruiting one, but it's not so much that it's out of the question if you save up for it.

While I was at it, I changed the Seleucid Chrysaspides to another type of recalled phalangite and tweaked their stats as follows (this is quoted from the new unit description):
"Developers' Note: This was a difficult unit to work with. There's only one potential mention of them in a Greek text, and most scholars believe that the translator in that case took unacceptable leaps in his attempt to correct a lacuna in Polybius's text. There's another potential mention of them in 1 Maccabees, but that may be a literary device rather than a serious military description. However, Bar-Kochva is a weighty voice in the camp arguing in favor of the existence of this unit, and we do have some evidence that some Seleucid units up-armoured against the threat of being pincushioned by Eastern archers. Therefore, we've decided to kill two birds with one stone and to present this unit as a variant of the "recalled veterans" unit, but one that has spent more money on its armour. Plus, we didn't need to use another model slot for it, so its presence hasn't required us to remove another unit of firmer historical providence."

------------------------------------------

As much as I'd like to give you more help, I'm afraid this would actually slow things down. I have no experience in coding/programming and I still feel like I don't understand the game very much. It would take a big amount of time until I'd be of any use in that regard. So I'd rather like to stick to playtesting and give any ideas and inspiration I can.
For that matter, it would be extremely helpful to see the next version of the beta to be released. You've already made so many changes compared to the current downloadable version that it's hard to keep track of them and give still relevant feedback at the same time

I understand. Your playtesting has been extremely helpful so far.

I intend to put out the next beta soon, as I feel like it's in a pretty good place now. I need to bug test it first, though, and make sure the unit_size_script is still functioning as intended after all of these changes.

Sorry for doublepost! This was supposed to be part of my last post:
(No problem. I fixed it. {He-Man}I HAVE THE POOOOWWWWWEEERRRRR!{/He-Man} -Q.I.)


They are absolutely not overpriced, their price is right where it should be! In my original post I only wanted to criticize the lack of a stamina trait.

Oh, OK. That's cool. Please let me know what you think about the fatigue thread, then.

[sere]

Actually, that's a fairly easy way to handle it, thanks. I've renamed the cities, that's not too far a move AI-wise for Taxila/Sagala, and adding the new river was a piece of cake with your map. Heh, now that you mention it, I think one of the cities on the old RTR 6.0/PE map was Sagala. That map was incredibly inaccurate in that part of the world (one of the main reasons I replaced it eventually), but it's funny that we have Sagala back now.

Thanks. I've put some more effort into this subject over the last two days. The literature (including atlases) I found on this offered differing opinions, of course. By proposing to rename "Taxila" to "Sagala" I referred to the ancient city that is identified with todays Sialkot in Pakistan and was the capital of the Indo-Greek Kingdom of the 2nd century BC. If it's really todays Sialkot, its location would actually be where "Taxila" was initially placed on the campaign map, between Chenab river and Ravi river. Sangala appears to have been a different city, east of the Hydraotis/Ravi... So if we opt for "Sagala" and assume that it's todays Sialkot, I'm afraid it was unnecessary to move the settlement on the map. I'm so sorry

I'd really like to give a more clear and factual picture and I even found a recent book, which could give up-to-date insight. Unfortunately, it's not available at the library of my university...

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Cohen, Getzel M. The Hellenistic settlements in the East from Armenia and Mesopotamia to Bactria and India. Berkeley, 2013.

I think it's because I've got the Marian Reforms turned on from the start of the game, even though I have a separate building that's for the bodyguard upgrade. *Sigh* Need to research this some more.
Sadly, nobody ever answered my question on that point: http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...-general-units

Now I get what you were talking about a few posts earlier. The hard-coded Marian reforms. Aha. I won't be a big help here, I'm afraid.

Ah hah! Thank you! I was wondering why the 'Ippeidemos economy was in the toilet even compared to the barb superfaction. You're right, I should help them. I've increased their tax bonus per region relative to the other superfactions by quite a bit. Even with the penalty now, they should be in decent shape.

Cool.

I added them for "Greek" as a culture, so that should cover everybody who needs them. You'll only be able to get them in large cities. Basically, all I did to add them was add "Greek" to the factions line for that building and then call on Almighty Zeus to make sure they had a building card.

So Macedon can build +5 farms in Byzantion (that region has base farming level 3)?! Greek Cities (and Chremonidean League) can build them in Syracuse, Pergamon, Sinope etc.?!
I guess it's ok, balance-wise, to make +5 farms available on a broader scale.

Speaking of buildings, let me add something else:
Are the different types of temples available to the hellenistic kingdoms intended to reflect their dynastic cults as well? I'm thinking of their (supposed) line of descent from certain gods (Seleucids -> Apollon; Ptolemaic dynasty/Lagids -> Herakles (which they took over from the Argead dynasty) etc.). For example, the Seleucids have no "Temple of Apollon" available (their 7 temples are to Herakles, Nike, Athena, Zeus, Hermes, Dionysos, Demeter).

OK. Let me know what you think. We tried to be consistent with these, but we used humans (us) instead of something automatic like Aradan's EDU generator, so errors may have crept in.

I'm going to take a look on upkeep costs, whenever I have time to spent

While I was at it, I changed the Seleucid Chrysaspides to another type of recalled phalangite and tweaked their stats as follows (this is quoted from the new unit description):
"Developers' Note: [...]"

Does this mean that the Seleucids have no standard/level 1 pike unit any longer (same category as "Pezoi" etc.: 14 attack, 16-18 defense, ~700 upkeep)? Would Silver Shields, who formed the standing army and can be considered professional soldiers, then be their 'cheapest' (or: most affordable) pike unit (their upkeep is ~850 if I remember correctly)?
I thought level 1 pike units would represent settlers/colonists who were recruited for the first time and therefore took more time to train (2 turns), while being of younger age and not yet owning/leasing land on their own, therefore lowering the overall economic costs of their service. In contrast, recalled/level 2 pike units also represent settlers/colonists, but those who have already served as 'standard' pikemen before and were rewarded with land, so their upkeep cost and skill (-> stats) are increased. 'Elite'/Level 3 units represent the standing army (ingame, these units have 16 attack (except for Silver Shields), high defense and the Eagle (inspire nearby troops)).
All hellenistic factions from Epirus to Baktria have these in common and I think it does work well from a gameplay perspective. Additionally, the increase in quality and cost of pike units correlates with them becoming available by upgrading colony buildings to a higher level.

I intend to put out the next beta soon, as I feel like it's in a pretty good place now. I need to bug test it first, though, and make sure the unit_size_script is still functioning as intended after all of these changes.

I. Can't. Wait.