Hellenika - Main thread

[Phalangitis]

Small update..
We haven't posted any news but trust me things are more alive than ever have been.There is an orgasm of new projects and ideas beeing tested right now and BETA version is proceeding steadily.I bealive that after 1-2 weeks of no news many things will be announced and fast.
I also think that the release is closer than it seems.Sory not beeing able to be more specific.We are trying to make every day of delay worth it.
Cheers.

[M@x1mus]

Small update..
We haven't posted any news but trust me things are more alive than ever have been.There is an orgasm of new projects and ideas beeing tested right now and BETA version is proceeding steadily.I bealive that after 1-2 weeks of no news many things will be announced and fast.
I also think that the release is closer than it seems.Sory not beeing able to be more specific.We are trying to make every day of delay worth it.
Cheers.

Basically when the posts are less the work is more.. Acts are better than talks!

[=ANTiKES=]

Small update..
We haven't posted any news but trust me things are more alive than ever have been.There is an orgasm of new projects and ideas beeing tested right now and BETA version is proceeding steadily.I bealive that after 1-2 weeks of no news many things will be announced and fast.
I also think that the release is closer than it seems.Sory not beeing able to be more specific.We are trying to make every day of delay worth it.
Cheers.

Anyone who dares to complain after the launch of R2 better donate his credit card to CA or whatever, haha... No really, thanks for letting us know and if you got ideas which would expand the mod even further, by all means take your time... I'm currently busy trying out those OP roman sword units which I find hilarious, so I won't rush you

[Phalangitis]

New features-campaign mechanisms,

1) Agents overhaul.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Agents interact with agents, armies, cities, provinces (enemy and own) , friendly generals-armies. And of course we got Spies, champions and dignitaries.

A) Champions: i) they can only kill other agents they are awful in manipulation. ii) they cannot inflict damage to armies with “magic” abilities like solo attacks that killed half of certain units soldiers or even diminish charge or reload abilities of troops. They can still delay or stop armies though even if no profound effect are placed in the target army. iii) Similarly they cannot affect foreign cities like they do in vanilla where single handed they could damage a building or enter a settlement releasing slaves and other exotic stuff.. iv) they can still draw some money or reduce PO in foreign provinces by guerilla activities while -in own province- they decrease recruitment time by 2 (an important feature in GaW since recruitment times for reserve troops [not regular] is very high) inside an army they can train, increase morale a bit, increase authority and zeal of general by 2.
Champions are cap depented from imperium like in vanilla

B) Dignitaries : i) They can only manipulate. They are terrible in assassination attempts. ii) they can undermine authority ,zeal or subterfuge of enemy generals as they do in vanilla , iii) They cannot harm cities except the merchant pay off which is kept.
iv) in enemy provinces they can cause more political unrest (can increase tension when democratic regions are occupied from oligarchic nations and vise versa) and also give a stronger diplomatic bonus to your nation towards your allies. In own provinces this bonus is smaller but to ALL nations Greek and Persian. They also decrease political tension if any. Iv) They can increase subterfuge attribute of generals by 2 on top the vanilla decrease of upkeep.
Dignitaries are cap depented from civ techonlogies (all 3 types)

C) Spies : i) They do both but with half the effectiveness of the agents above. ii) they keep their vanilla actions (poison, arson etc) but poisoning has much more less killing potential. Initially they can kill 10-20 soldiers and only if you top all attributes they can reach good killing numbers. When you destroy baggage train they only slow down armies and don’t reduce equipment of units iii) they keep their vanilla actions ( arson, incite unrest, poison) iv) when inside an army along with agent protection they keep in control the general. They reduce political actions happening by 15% while they reduce also his authority by 1.
Spies are cap depented from political power.You get max number (7) in low political power (representing your desperate acts to stay in power) but also a desent number (5) in max power

2) Political disturbance management.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

A very common event in PP was rebellions of political nature. Athens was enforcing democracy everywhere while Sparta Oligarchies. There were regions accepting this change while others when the occupying force left they were rebelling and reinstating the previous political system. So now I increased PO penalties for different culture (political system) to 20. This number means that if you are Oligarchy like Sparta (dorian culture) and you take a province of 100% democratic nature (Ionian culture) you will face only from political differences -20 in PO. If there is 50% culture -> -10 PO etc. to face this you got 5 options. 1) use agents (see above dignitaries) 2) have an army in region and especially in “forced march” stance which means enforcing peace violently 3) Issue a specific edict which is called “ostracism of opposition”. There you remove political enemies and engulf local allies with bribes. So you gain a decrease in PO penalties but also decrease in taxes (since they get to put them in their pockets) also a decrease in political events happening and an increase of corruption factionwide. 4) construct barracks that keep peace but drain caps from reserve armies. 5) construct political friendly buildings (eg democratic buildings in democratic regions).So in long term if you pay attention you may put it under control

3) Winning- Loosing battles consequences.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

In Peloponnesian war after a defeat or win the allies of the side defeated usually rebelled. Unfortunately there is not way to directly link this so I used a work around. With every win you get the good attacker trait just to lock a trait position for this character and no other traits get in the way. This trait will not give extra advantages. After 5 more wins you get the next level which along with gravitas bonuses and other stuff it lowers the PO penalties of occupying opposing political regions (like Athens which is a democracy will face initially even -20 PO in Kos which is an oligarchic region).After another 6 wins will get the last level with even more bonuses. Now you see that to advance you need 6 and 12 victories. Now for EVERY defeat you decrease in rank and in negative numbers you suffer extremely high penalties in opposing political regions thus leading to rebellions probably (there are ways to avoid this as I describe above) .

4) Miscellaneous – small changes

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

1)Increased PO penalties or bonuses according to Political power
2)Linked PO with political action happening.(the more happy your people the more support you get the less political events happening)
3) Finaly as your character increase in level they are more vulnerable in assassination attepts.

Those mechanisms above will be fine tuned after internal group meetings and play testing.Final versions will be exlained in release with a detailed "mod manual".

[Tenerife_Boy]

Yeahhhhh growing upppppppppp!!!

[mr.blonde]

all of those sound very interesting at least, few questions that perhaps have been answered.
- any plans for temples overhaul? I think the era is ideal for more diversity in deities and bonuses.
- any new army stance for more strategical campaigning?
- Ze persians will be a real threat for the Greek states unlike vanilla WoS?
- any plan to include a form of Junaidi83 agressive CAI mod, along with TTT for traits?
- Naval warfare has been fubar from CA as we all know, any tweak there?

Sorry if all these stuff has been answered but i am so excited about this mod and it looks impressive so far.
Keep up the good work guys!

[Linke]

Excellent!

[Phalangitis]

@ Mr blondie (forgot to quote your message)

I will take them one by one..but before I do please read those links. They hold all info you may need for GaW campaign mechanics.Gaw will be based on original PP’s mechanics [url] http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?674949-Peloponnesiakos-Polemos-%28P-P-%29[/url]. Also some new mechanics will be added like those above or those in the first page of this thread.


-Unfortunately temple overhaul is a big job with most cases not any realistic meaning.I mean having a Neptune temple will not make a nation better in sea,or Artemis will not produce better archers or Hermes would not promote trade in real life.Other factors would affect those and these are included in one way or another..For example we include regional bonuses to Krete for archers produced there and other distinctive regional goodies all described in detail in the release manual. so we will not get into temples probably.(sorry).

-there are many changes in stances.
1)Forced march is actualy removed and replaced with a “peace enforcing stance” where you force peace in a province by eliminating cultural opposition
2)raiding promotes slave release of the target province or increased slave capturing after a successful battle (which in turn can be sold with a special sell slaves edict for money) ,loot income increase ,upkeep reduction (they find their own resources by pillaging ) ,hinder enemy province with expense to your own attack effectiveness (if you are trying to catch men alive you are less effective in killing) etc
3) when navies are docked cost 0 money to urge you to keep your fleet docked as long as possible to simulate maintenance needed for ships.
Those are some examples

-The Persians will not only be threat but also playable and maybe the most interesting faction to play with many new features (Linke is in charge and will describe later in detail.They are still in development and testing.).If you go and capture areas of importance to them (like Ionian colonies) you get high diplomatic penalties and in fact starting a downward spiral that leads to war eventually.

-I asked Junaidy to make a specific version of his mod for GaW.He had his hands full but I think we will have something from him.If not his generic mod will be compatible. About TTT specific to tell you the truth I am not that big fan because they make generals OP. I have a similar mod made by myself in the past called “strategic thinking” and created based on actual biographies of Lysander and othe important generals of that time but still I think we will not use it because after extensive playtesting I found that AI has not the smarts to take advantage of all the effects of the generals leading to OP human player (which he takes advantage of them) in an already easy game. Our goal is to make the players life difficult and to try to experience defeats now or then or at least make him think twice his moves..

-On naval warfare not deep changes were made but I have played quite a lot in testing and to tell you the truth for the first time in my Rome games I enjoyed them. Try PP to get an idea until GaW is released. What you will experience there multiply it 10 times and this is GaW. Sorry if I sound cocky but GaW is going to be a ge hopefully even if only half our projects pass in the final cut.
Cheers.

[mr.blonde]

Thank you very much for the detailed answers Phalangiti, all have valid points and loads of work. You dont sound cocky at all, GaW it will be a masterpiece!
Anyway, indeed temples overhaul is a of work with only rpg purposes. Although i insist
Very happy about the rest. I didnt played much of PP due to tpy. Shame of me, i know.
Closing this, while i am waiting for the release, i hope not only for eye candy but also for exciting campaign, i am sure GaW will deliver

[Phalangitis]

Yeah..MAny people hate the 4tpy thing of PP.Gaw will be in 2 versions 4 and 12 TPY.
BUT i will try to convince you and all who will read this to try 4 tpy for gameplay,optical and historic reasons
1)Historic part : What sounds strange to most is the following fact "Why my armies should need 1 year maybe more to reach from Sparta to Athens?"
This sounds logical at first but it is not.In ancient times armies were not constant.THey were assembled in spring or summer and dissolved at Autumn.So in reallity an army woyld travel from Sparta to Athens pillage and loot and then return to home land by fall.Here you get to keep your armies for as long as you like.You may reach Athens and stay there forever.So the slow movement it actually represents control over a territory and not actual movement.It took a decade for Spartans to build a stronghold in Decelia and leave there a constant guard in Attica to pillage Athens in constant basis.In a test campaign as Sparta in PP in turn 50 (roughly 10 years time) i was in a place of expansion slightly below the actual land they got in Peloponnesian war.
Also the war lasted 30 years.A game usually is concluded in 100-120 turns.In 12TPY this is 10 years and in 4 TPY 30 as in reality.THis affect agent age,generals etc..
2)Gameplay reasons : THe GOds and omens feature is also historic and adds to gameplay planning.YOu should take under consideration also unforseen elements in a campaign.You may start strond and certain delays give time to AI to better prepare itself.Unfortunately it does not work well in 12TPY.(this may be fixed though..)
3)Optical : There is an immersion killer bug for me in 12 TPY.Seasonal graphics are busted.You may be in July and have Autumn visuals in campaign map with leaves falling or be winter and have a Spring visuals..
I will not insist but me personally will play in 4 TPY..

[Linke]

I have much in store for Persia, maybe I can get a preview of the units this weekend. But beyond that on the campaign side there will also be as much work.

I care not too much for tpy, but I will be doing a submid to increase navy movement alot.

[Phalangitis]

Agree on navy..Was planning this also.

[Antiokhos Euergetes]

This sounds and looks brilliant, what a bunch of talented geniuses you have got together

[=ANTiKES=]

AI agent spam is so annoying in vanilla WoS. It's really good to read that poison won't be that effective anymore in GaW! I'm not sure how other people see it but I always saw agents as units which scout the area and slow armies down. Dignitaries as people which improve provinces and heros as army buffs! In vanilla you've to take everyone with you cause AI agent spam is so insane that you really cannot do anything else but spamming, too...

[Wulfgardt]

Probably a stupid question but here goes anyway,is this part of the PP mod or a separate entity altogether?I bought WOS this morning as i love the whole Greek ancient history and have been looking around for decent mods as i cant stand to play vanilla full stop. I usually only play DEI for my campaigns but would like to try something a little diff for WOS. However ive seen numerous mod threads here and steam and they are all starting to confuse me a little(very new to modding) as to which mod part is part of overhaul mods and so on. I love the sound of PP and also would like to know what i need to download(including any sub mods) for a great game using PP.Sorry if this is a bit jumbled,thanks in advance for any help and advice. Wulf

[Linke]

Probably a stupid question but here goes anyway,is this part of the PP mod or a separate entity altogether?I bought WOS this morning as i love the whole Greek ancient history and have been looking around for decent mods as i cant stand to play vanilla full stop. I usually only play DEI for my campaigns but would like to try something a little diff for WOS. However ive seen numerous mod threads here and steam and they are all starting to confuse me a little(very new to modding) as to which mod part is part of overhaul mods and so on. I love the sound of PP and also would like to know what i need to download(including any sub mods) for a great game using PP.Sorry if this is a bit jumbled,thanks in advance for any help and advice. Wulf

This is based on PP, but it's got 20 times more content.

Make sure you don't get bored in PP before this is out, my goal is in 20 days

[Wulfgardt]

That sounds promising,i shall just take a look at PP without starting a full campaign and wait for the release,thanks for your answer matey.

[Phalangitis]

Changed ships range for more strategic importance..
Original range

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[IMG][/IMG]

New range..
South and east (check the mini map also)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[IMG][/IMG]

North

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[IMG][/IMG]

And West

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[IMG][/IMG]

Of course before implementation playtesting will be made to see how AI is coping with these ranges..
The goal is to have navy as a fast attack force and to play the role Pericles wanted for them.Fast attacks in the rear lines of the enemy..

[Hero of Sparta]

Very excited about this mod,i shall be keeping a very beady eye on its progress.

[Hoplite of Ilis]