Slow garrison recovery?

[Odinarius]

Playing with FoTE.

As WRE, my garrisons are taking ages to recover. After 20 turns, many of them have not recovered to full strength!

I figured out some causes, like shortage of food and edict which raises public order, which block it. What are the ways to speed up the recovery (building military buildings?)? Also, do AI factions get almost instant garrison recovery? Doesn't seem fair...

[Augustusng]

I don't think there are many ways to speed up garrison replenishment at the moment. The only buildings that help are military ports, and that's only for naval replenishment (since naval replenishment is very slow in EP). Replenishment is generally slower in EP to make things a bit more challenging. There's one technology and some ancillaries that improve replenishment, but that's about it. It's limited on purpose, but maybe I could add a bit more somewhere. I'd like to have a population system and work that in of course, but that's far away, if we ever get to it.

I don't remember if FotE slows down replenishment further, but that might also be part of it. And... do the increased unit sizes in FotE affect that? Might be that too; I'm not really sure.

As far as the AI's "instant" garrison recovery, that's a bug (feature?) that's existed since Rome 2. I think the issue is when an AI faction completes a building in a region, the garrison recovers instantly. And I'm not sure there's much that can be done about that.

[Odinarius]

I mean this situation. Take a look at the year, and the garrison has still not recovered. It has not been attacked. Food has been and is plentiful.


This one was attacked, but the recovery is very long.


This one has recovered normally.

Now, I don't get where is the catch, why some garrisons don't recover at all, and they all recover so slowly. 10 turns is a lot. Or is it intended to work this way?

[Augustusng]

The first one is simple. The edict disables replenishment (it says food shortage because that's the effect it uses - the food is going to the circuses, let's say).

The second... I'm not sure. Is the city damaged and you're repairing it? I think the garrison replenishes more slowly until you repair the main building.

[Odinarius]

Yes, I wrote about the edict in the first post, then forgot about it

For the second, it seems that is the way it is set, to recover slowly unless you built the barracks. Recovery doubles for the saggitari and numerus if you have the 1st level barracks, but lanciari limitanei need 2nd level barracks to recover faster. You can see on the lower screenshot that the numerus are recovering faster then lanciari.

Well, in the end, it seems it is working as intended, though I still think that 8 turns to recover a destroyed unit if you have the barracks is a lot (180 people in the unit, 23 men per turn). It is 12 turns if you don't have the appropriate barracks (16 men per turn). It forces you to use standing armies instead of relying on garrisons. Well, an interesting strategy issue for sure

[Augustusng]

Interesting, I didn't know the barracks increase replenishment speed, but it makes sense. I guess that might be a scripted or hardcoded feature, since I haven't seen that referenced directly in the tables (or I just don't know where to look ).

[Odinarius]

Actually the system works quite well. You can absorb one attack, but you are left open for the subsequent assaults.

What I can't understand at the moment are "Office given to subordinate" loyalty penalties. I have a civil war because of it. Whenever I promote somebody, the others get it. Is it tied to the prestige? Can't figure it out yet.

[Augustusng]

That's a vanilla feature - it triggers (I think) on the promotion for any other characters who have more gravitas than the one you promoted. It's tricky to manage in FotE, since FotE makes it significantly easier for a civil war to start (EP doesn't have this feature to the same degree as FotE).

[Odinarius]

Thank you for your replies!

I have played EP+FotE as WRE for some 20+ hours, on Normal (as I hate unfair modifiers) so hopefully I can provide some feedback. I have a great time, the diplomacy and strategic gameplay are great and working as intended. I have great fun disseminating settlement paths and upgrades and creating a perfect empire. I find the lack of positive edicts an interesting proposition - they are specialist, sometimes very useful, sometimes it is better without them. It would be good if there was no pop-up for issuing an edict at the end of every turn, it gets boring soon.

As WRE, most of your battles are defending settlements, which you do with a repeatable formula (shield wall on pikeman + archers above), that is a little bit boring, but expected. At the beginning, main danger is in Britannia, but the problem is that the enemy can never really take any of your settlements in early game. The garrison of any lvl. 1 small town is enough to repulse a full stack (one unit of sagittari can get 700+kills), so if the player knows what he is doing, you are unassailable.

In the east, Sassanids are slowly grinding at ERE. I left Huns to plunder my provinces for some 20 turns until I gathered enough lvl 2 and 3 troops to take them on. Now I'm conquering territory to the north even though I'm 70 turns in, it seems I can't be stopped so I'll probably start another campaign.

Battles are ok, I guess, but the weakest part of the game, along with the above mentioned "subordinate" issue. I'd really like if someone could insert some tooltips into the game to ease the micromanagement. Rebellious generals are important in Roman gameplay in this period, but for now, it's far too random to be fun. Still not sure is it gravitas or general rank or previous postings that decide who is subordinate to who. Getting this segment sorted out would really perfect the strategic aspect, which is now, for once in a Total War game, a stronger part of the game!

[Jurand of Cracow]

Hi Ordinarius,
good to see somebody playing ATW-EP. I've spent many hours on this.
It may be interesting for you what is my experience. I've played games as Eranshahr, Roma per Orientis, Garamantians, Bani Lakhm with FotE-EP (all in all 150 turns, H/N or VH/N), and with the Tuskmod 1.7: Visigoths,and a long, long 130-turns Rome per Occidentis (vh/n).
My observations:
* defending settlements without walls proved to be impossible for me. The enemy missiles would kill my troops, and the shield/spear walls didn't work for me. Maybe it was because of the Tuskmod, I don't know.
* Eranshahr is always pushing hard on ERE, but there's space and actually I could get my troops to the ERE rescue around turn 120.
* I find actually battles as a better part of the mod. They're too brisk but thank's to the extensive info with pausing you can rally command your army. It fun for me. I also have high hopes for this submod by Xeryx.
* the problem is the strategy I call sniping for the armies. You get several full-stacks (2-4) and go to catch single or double armies of the enemy. Then you autoresolve. It works also for the AI: it's not bad at positioning several of its armies around your army and attacking you. Actually, if there're 2 AI against your 1 army, I find it impossible not to get beaten. The result is: you try to keep those 2-4 armies always close to one another (first, not to lose them, second, to kill the straying enemy armies). Given comparatively high movement points, you can catch and destroy army-by-army. It's how I've dealt with the Huns: just eliminiting army by army.
Now I'm going to check how the AoC plays. Some say it's a considerable improvement, some say it's not. I'll see.
JoC

[Odinarius]

Hi Jurand,
I've been playing with Himyar up to turn 160 and these are my observations:
- ERE gets smashed by Sassanids (Eranshahr), WRE lives much longer and decays slowly as it should. No Sassanid client state ever revolts?
- there is too much disease on troop stacks. It's alright for settlements, but as soon as you go out of the protective envelope of your sanitation, your (and enemy) stacks get diseased. AI doesn't use sanitation buildings. I literally have 9 diseased stacks against 10 Hun diseased stacks, and this happens every couple of turns, including my previous game as WRE. I think the chances of stacks getting infected should be halved. Other then that, it's a good mechanic, diseases were common in campaigns. Still, now they're omnipresent. Maybe introduce some means of prevention of diseases on stacks?
- as Himyar, it is impossible to get 75% of Judaism in every province to build the final barracks, due to so many local traditions. It would require a priest in every province, and even then you couldn't get 75%. The religion system is good, I think the Himyar barrack requirement should be changed. Maybe 50%?
- The Quarantine edict doesn't lower the building income. At all. Nothing changes in income for Himyar settlements.
- I have a -1 penalty on state religion from Imperium. Yet, all my provinces without Religious fervor get -3 penalty. Those with that edict don't get any penalty (+1 from that edict cancels out the -1 from Imperium?). Still, -3 is not what it should be. It can be observed in all my provinces without that edict. Screenshot:


- this may or may not be linked with the mods. I killed Atilla 5 times and didn't get any message for that. On my previous game as WRE, he disappeared after 2 kills (autoresolve and agent). Now, whatever I do, he lives, no message... Maybe this is linked to Himyar as well.

Now, please don't get the impression I don't like the mods - I like it very much! The economy is great, as are all the other things added. This combination of mods is not far from being perfect

[Odinarius]

One more example of too may diseases, Abxazeti have been like this for the last 50 turns or so I have been allied with them.


BTW, is this compatible with any 12 TPY mods?

[Augustusng]

Thanks for the detailed reports! I'm traveling now, but I'll be working on the next update to EP once I get back home in a week or two.

Disease is getting a nerf/rework in the next update. It's hard to get it right, the way I'd like it to work. The trouble is that the AI doesn't know how to deal with it, but at the same time it's too easy for the player to deal with. I'll have to check on that Quarantine income effect. Maybe something isn't assigned correctly.

Sassanid client states do sometimes revolt, but there are less of them in EP. The Sassanids start in control of most regions controlled by those factions in the vanilla game.

The penalty for state religion is -1 per region, not province. Unfortunately, that's the only way it can work, so the penalty is low so it's not overwhelming with more regions.

I might lower that religion requirement for the level 5 EoS barracks. It's already lower than vanilla though. Maybe it's just more difficult with some religions that don't have local traditions in as many regions.

No idea what's going with Attila. EP doesn't change anything about his spawn/kill scripts.

Oh, and for 12 TPY, please use the 12 TPY submod you can find in the official submod thread of this forum.

[Odinarius]

Thanks for the answer! I appreciate it greatly that you still watch this mod.

As for the religion, thanks for the information about the regions. Makes sense now. I figured out that you get more priests at higher levels (10 at the middle level, Intimidating), so I managed to get those lvl. 5 barracks. The thing is, they don't provide anything. This is probably down to the FotE. No need to lower the requirement with this number of priests, but the barracks themselves should have something to them. Religion actually works pretty nice.

The reason why I had problems is not just priests, but some other things, chiefly the lack of wood in eastern hemisphere. You need wood to build lvl. 3 religious buildings, and you can't find any for a long time. In a more central position, you would have the option of trade, but being on the Arabian peninsula, you can trade only with Sassanids and the local states, and they don't have any. Sassanids get theirs from Armenia, but they can't forward it.
The only way to get wood is to quickly declare war on Gassanids and ERE and take a port on the Mediterranean before the Sassanids do. Your first enemy is most likely Aksum, but you must not advance through Egypt, rather through Arabian peninsula. In my game, Sassanids cut my capital off from the sea (I was advancing through Egypt), so until I conquered their client state Bani Lakhm, I couldn't trade with anyone on Mediterranean, despite having Alexandria (since my capital did not have a land connection to it). So there was no way to get wood until I conquered that Iuvavum from WRE, late in the game.
Essentially, there is no wood in eastern hemisphere, so maybe some requirements should be changed for Himyar and Aksum, especially for religious buildings. It penalizes them a lot in mid game.

When I attacked Sassanid clients, Sassanids stayed out of the war. You don't even get a penalty in diplomacy with them for that.

As for the money, I had too much. After a while, I had more then 100,000 gold per turn. Most of it through taxes (91,000). Crete, Rodos and Cyprus yielded more then 24,000 fully built. Same for Aegyptus (Alexandria province). I think you wrote in the other topic that economy will be adjusted, make it easier for minors and more difficult for big states. That will have to be done.

Enjoy your travel, don't bother answering until you get home

[xeryx]

What if I told you guys, XAI has fixed sieges..to where the AI will actually build and use siege equipment and go over the walls and break down the gates...would you get excited???

[Augustusng]

That sounds cool, sure. What kind of values did you change?

Is XAI compatible with EP? I haven't checked to see, but it looks like it would depend on which of the XAI packs you wanted to use. If you're interested in working together to increase compatibility, we can talk about that , but isn't it a bit gauche to be advertising your mod on someone else's mod forum?

[xeryx]

Nope, XAI is designed to be a core mod to fix vanilla. If you use it as a base for your mod and everything works in your mod too. Xai isn't done yet though, just thought you might like to hear some good news!