[Preview] Campaign Mechanics: Building chains, Seasons and Urbanisation

[Petellius]

So a long time ago buried deep in some thread (I think the main one) I asked if we would be able to have more than the normal amount of buildings. That is to say, if we could build up small cities to have more than four buildings and big cities to have more than 6. At the time one of you guys (I forget who) wanted to do that, but I haven't seen anything about it in the stuff you guys have been releasing, so I assume it was never done?

A guy called Daruwind (not on the team) had some small success, but it was never good enough to really be used I am afraid.

[sinuhe2]

A guy called Daruwind (not on the team) had some small success, but it was never good enough to really be used I am afraid.

Its not my intención to look a complainer, but ive noticed that many cities have no hills or height and that would add realism to them , as the real ones were in the pastm, anyway great work.Hope to play early ,casue for today i cant play the cities with the mod of cities for ancient empries.

[Willhelm123]

We can improve the visual look of cities on the campaign map but its a lot of work and not a priority right now.

[FlaviAug]

Petillus great work. (I hope we will have soon a campaign)

please DO NOT repeat the same mistakes with the ROME 2 developers. What I mean: Seasons causes PO penalties? Seriously?

Season should affect: growth, food, trade (yes in winter trade was harder back in the day), movement points, building (agriculture), recruitment (how many are willing to go to war during winter), supply and maintenance of armies and navies

The buildings look ok (-5000? I guess I do not see the big picture, but ok!) I have to test the mod before I am sure if it is balance or not!

Thx!

[Celtoi]

Concerning the provided screenshots I can see and feel SO MUCH LOVE AND DEDICATION in all those little details and created menu styles.
I love it and I'm really sure I'm gonna play it with even MORE LOVE AND AFFECTION as have been put into it.
I've bought Attila from the beginning, but actually it will be the 1st time I'm going to play ATW for more than 4 hours and that is ONLY because of this mod.
Cheers, team AE !

(+rep.)

[greedogre]

stopped reading when i saw this " how government chains worked in Europa Barborum and Roma Surrectum II". this is like the gurentee depth of campaign play.

My main conern is recuitment though, IMO an overhaul mod= recuitment+battle+enconomic, things like weather season they are just sub catag of the enconomic section. i really hope Petellius you can spend around 30r play Dei mod since it's THE only overhaul mod for rome2. so you can tell the pro and con of their way.

Dei literily have 1000's unit in game, 90% of their AoR unit/Mec have no reason to be recuited, this is the system limitation of Rome2 retrain system, in Rome1 engine, after combat in order to create momentum to push forward, you will manuly emerge damged unit, so there might be slot leave open for you to fill with local unit or mec, that is where low- medium local unit start to have it's use, because it's there. but in Rome2 stlye retrain system, unit rarely get destoried, and no matter how far from your recruitment base, it will always fill it up. make local low-medium level unit pointless to have, your home unit will always be better one.

difference of recuitment/retrain system need to be consider when desgining AoR/mec unit, it should not the more unit the better, my personal favor of the reciutment system is RR/RC for SS6.4, it is the craziest to turn literily 1000 meaningfull unit worth to recruit and they all perform as they should on the battlefield by combat effectiveness, cost efficency, and so on. It's a medieval theme, it cross dark age renassion and discovery age, even have rich back ground they only have 1000unit, i doubt classical theme will have similar numbers in term of unit design

[Petellius]

I'm not really grasping your point.

[Eburovic]

I think what he mainly suggests is to have a nullified replenishment system, forcing us to recruit-merge new units with ancients one, or recruiting AoR on the go. So the multiple AoR recruit has a real need/meaning to be recruited (cause even if you can't recruit like auxiliary cavalry in a region, it's still going to bereplenished with a ridiculous malus) I'm absolutely loving the idea of a nullified-manual (or close to) refill system !
This replenishment is quiet boring in term of dynamic, that's true in my opinion. It would make losses count, not just a number refilling to 100%.. although would the AI would probably be a at managing it ?
That would still be awesome no ?

But @greedogre you could precise your point you're actually not so clear about some arguments

[Petellius]

We've talked about this as a team before, but it makes sense for armies to get replenishment as reinforcements or recruits slowly trickle in. We discussed maybe limiting it to cities only. Maybe one day we can attach it to our supply script. Who knows.

[Sagat]

Oh those Rome 1 building icons look AWESOME!!!!
I hope the Unit Cards are done in an identical manner, aside from the nostalgia aspect they really look clean and easily identifiable...

[Eburovic]

Yeah that's right it was quiet tedious to refill a whole army in ancient total wars, the only thing that bothers me with new system is that it's free, you don't spend any coins on re-recruitment..wich is none-sense ^^
But limited to city could be a good option, hope you get it in at some point once all is clean&out
I have another game breaker (since i'm posting now ~~) wich is the choices offered aftered a battle was won. The most heretic being refilling a portion of the losses with enemy soldiers and gaining a integrity bonus but getting a malus when you sell off the prisoners (WTF? by the way the amount of money gained is soo ridiculous) ... ><
What do you think/have done with those features if they've been changed at all ?

[greedogre]

firstly thanks Eburovic to clearify yes, that is mine main point, post that very late at night, get very excited when see this mod get a campaign preview.

my secondery point is, recruitment is the most important aspect on campainge map, season and weathered no matter how you tweak it, in the end is a choice of wait 1 turn or 2 turn, insignificant choice consider over all- turn it takes. in Dei mod it take 300-400 turn to end, i assurme it will take similar turn to end it in this mod as well

a nullified replenishment system that Eburovic suggest is much more interest in term of general game play, it create ripple effect on your campaign play through. when you recruit-merge new units it changes your composition of your army, for example if you fight on the steppe your composition of your army might change from infantry heavy into more of range and infantry balance army, since you have emerge your wounded one and leave place for Hose and foot archers (this might be the only unit avaible on this region, effect of this might varies depand on the region you fight). and this ultimately changes your battle experence as well. this is what replenish system cant offer because in the end the impact of the curent replenish system is just another wait 1 turn and 2 turn choice, and after a while once you start to filed full stack army, battle feel repeative.

thats why I kept saying how important it is, a revolutionlize recruitment system is worth to build around it in term of campaign overhaul

[Petellius]

Well we plan to eventually have a manpower script. As for replenishment, armies cost a lot of money to maintain in AE, and will cost even more when in enemy territory and when besieging.

[Prometheos]

But having an army in enemy territory should be cheaper, with food being taken from the villages and so on.

[Falco]

Havoc posted a new vid;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEys8IR9Mcc

[Eburovic]

@prometheus
Not necessarily if you think in term of gameplay and not historicity (wich is the error we all do) : If you go on campaigning then your army is at full cost, making war is really not cheap. But if they're just standing in territory they just act like 'garrisons'. I think the AE team is reaching for that
But again, yes I think that garrisoning in cities only should make the standing cost cheaper, like the recruitment base. And I'm sticking to Greedogre idea wich is a real turner for me x)
It's not so cool to have people running around with ideas at the actual moment for sure Petellius ^^ but we can't deny that the autofill is the actual thing that makes the campaign&armie's unit feels like jsut numbers on a card (among others that you seem to already have much improved, like the urbanisation system <3 ). I mean, as the manpower system wich already exists (people of rome, that I was so hyped with :B) does not have real impact on limiting recruitement. The population is always waaay too numerous when you have to recruit just 200 men... It's that kind of problem when historicity conflicts with gameplay impact&variety.
I'm just thinking about medieval II's limitation for exemple. We had just a pool of available unit, and by recruiting the pool emptied and we had to wait for it to refill, creating momentum and real stress when the nennemies army were out of control and roaming in territory over-numbered ! x)
It simulated population & material costs of recruitment. And next to it there was a population system. And the both were dynamic and exchanging. It's not all about manpower.

But the work you've put in is already extreme !! And I can't wait playing your first release I just regret not being able to help, I'm just a film maker don't know much of how to script the damn thing :\

[Willhelm123]

stopped reading when i saw this " how government chains worked in Europa Barborum and Roma Surrectum II". this is like the gurentee depth of campaign play.

My main conern is recuitment though, IMO an overhaul mod= recuitment+battle+enconomic, things like weather season they are just sub catag of the enconomic section. i really hope Petellius you can spend around 30r play Dei mod since it's THE only overhaul mod for rome2. so you can tell the pro and con of their way.

Dei literily have 1000's unit in game, 90% of their AoR unit/Mec have no reason to be recuited, this is the system limitation of Rome2 retrain system, in Rome1 engine, after combat in order to create momentum to push forward, you will manuly emerge damged unit, so there might be slot leave open for you to fill with local unit or mec, that is where low- medium local unit start to have it's use, because it's there. but in Rome2 stlye retrain system, unit rarely get destoried, and no matter how far from your recruitment base, it will always fill it up. make local low-medium level unit pointless to have, your home unit will always be better one.

difference of recuitment/retrain system need to be consider when desgining AoR/mec unit, it should not the more unit the better, my personal favor of the reciutment system is RR/RC for SS6.4, it is the craziest to turn literily 1000 meaningfull unit worth to recruit and they all perform as they should on the battlefield by combat effectiveness, cost efficency, and so on. It's a medieval theme, it cross dark age renassion and discovery age, even have rich back ground they only have 1000unit, i doubt classical theme will have similar numbers in term of unit design

Well regarding AOR and Mercs in AE you will definitely want to recruit them. Many factions in AE have large gaps in their technical and strategic abilities, Numidia for example only has one heavy infantry unit and you wont get it until late in the campaign, so you're going to want some heavy mercs/aor there. Rome of course is all just heavy infantry so you'll definitely need the AOR auxilia. It varies a lot, some factions lack good infantry, some lack good cavalry, very few are all rounders, so non native units will be very useful in AE. Mercenaries are also not overpriced like in Vanilla, just a little more expensive than regular units, this is because historically many factions used complete mercenary armies, so we dont want them to just fill the quick emergency recruited unit like they do in vanilla but to be a mainstay in your army and fill in the gaps of your factions weaknesses.

Further we don't really have duplicate units in AE, you wont, for a hypothetical example, find a unit named Celtic Heavy Swords and then another named Celtic Noble Swords which both look the same and have similar stats, because historically that would just be the same unit, we don't like those needless fake variations which exist purely to increase the number of units in the mod. So for AE this means every unit has its place and purpose in your factions roster and tactics.

[greedogre]

thanks for the explaination, this really sounds a sophisticate way for unit desgin, in term of unit desgin is not always the more the beter. and your overhaul about mec sounds exciting, i still remember in SS6.4 to park a general in italy, just for recuiting Swiss pikemen( they fight like bossxD).

i would love to have a interesting recruitment system, but with information you provide,i guess we will just have to wait the mod released to see how it all play out

[DCyDe]

The fertility map makes no sense whatsoever. The balkans are extremly mountainous (especially Bosnia and Greece), which didn't allow for big agriculture back in antiquity and even today, on the other hand the two most fertile regions of the time on the map (Nile-valley, and Mesopotamia) are only average?
The illyrian province of the Roman empire did not get so wealthy through agriculture but because of trade, fishing and mining.

[Petellius]

The fertility map in that picture was bugged, and has now been fixed. Turns out every province apart from the Italian ones apply the seasonal effects three times... because reasons.

Also base fertility is quite low anyway, you'll need to invest in irrigation to really make it go higher. Still, fertility of 5+ gives a pretty hefty food and economic boost that will make your faction rich.