Some considerations on the provinces system (and previous settlement systems)

[Basil II the B.S]

From a seasoned player of the TW series, what worked and what not; I'm placing this here but it's a broader discussion and what I think went wrong with the provinces system, why and how it feels compared to previous systems. :
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Rome TW:
-single type of settlement, growth based on a predetermined value, taxation levels and a few buildings
-1 building per turn upgrades
-single unit per turn, with top units requiring multiple turns (slow gameplay)
-walls and streets required investments
-capital can be moved, distance from capital decreases public order


Opinion: In its simplicity, this worked just fine. Main cities would develop faster than others, the player had complete control on which to develop and how, which generally would result:
-high growth settlements being developed on all types of buildings and providing military
-low growth settlements being developed mainly on economic/public order buildings, then cultural, then sanitation.

Religion had a marginal role as it boosted either the military, or the economy, or the public order, thus can be counted as one of them. Streets are a must in every settlement, walls only in defensive spots.

BI:
-religion now is a factor and religious buildings do the conversion, with effect on public order

Main downsides: settlements are all the same, anyone who isn't Rome lacks the 3rd tier street, Easterners and Barbarians lack second tier streets, Barbarians lack non-wooden walls, magnifying a clear ranking in terms of civilizations. Some are far ahead than others.

Rating 8/10

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Medieval 2 TW:

Basic same system as Rome.
-Single type of settlement, growth based on a predetermined value, taxation levels and a few buildings
-Streets and walls require investment.
-1 building per turn.
-Religion plays a factor in public order like in BI, agents help spreading it.
-capital can be moved, distance from capital decreases public order

Main differences:
-multiple slots for hiring units
-castles and cities

Opinion: the castle and cities system did not work well. Castles had a fixed tax rate on normal, which would result in characters being set as governors for them becoming ''poor tax farmers'' and receving a ton of bad traits. Thus you'd never want to keep any character in a castle, only in cities. Cities also had a ''free upkeep'' for a higher number of units (up to 4-5 if I remember correctly) while castles had 1-2. So not only you'd want to avoid keeping characters in castles, but units too, making them virtually undefended all the time. Castles also had a public order bonus, so you could actually leave them undefended. A spawning garrison, something introduced in later TW games, would have helped this system immensely, making castles harder to capture and a bulwark of defense they were supposed to be.

Finally, the AI never developed them well, focusing only on walls upgrade.Lack of economic value meant that the AI was more than eager to give them out in exchange of peace, something that could be abused and you could get 2-3 castles for a peace.

It also had a major impact on the type of armies the AI created. Since it preferred cities and didn't develop castles properly, the AI would spam low quality spear militia for most factions and you'd be facing mostly crap armies, unlike Rome TW. To exacerbate this, militia-mainly armies greatly favoured the 3 factions with the best militia in the early game, the Italian ones. So you'd have Milan overruning France with Genoese crossbow militias, Venice overruning HRE, Sicily overrunning the Byzantines just with Italian spear militias. And that alone was even further exacerbated by the fact that those 3 retained the AI of the 3 Roman factions of Rome TW (Sicily-Scipii, Venice-Brutii, Milan-Julii), making them by far the strongest in the game.

For the player, it played mainly the same as Rome:
-high growth cities develop both economically and military
-low growth mainly economically
-few castles for top units

Rating 5/10

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Empire TW:
Evolution of the castles and cities system.

Now there are two types of settlemens:
-large ones with multiple types buildings, extra like historical palaces, admiralships
-smaller ones with a main government building, walls and streets. The smaller ones can be developed either militarily or economically.
-multiple buildings upgrades per turns, just like multiple slots for units creations

Standard settlement management:
-all natural resources are now not only visible on the map but can be interacted with by invading armies as ''minor villages'' that the player can often develop according to his own needs, colleges, religious, workshops
-walls and streets still require investments but all factons have the same, eliminating the tier type of Rome
-religion works sort of the same way as previous titles
-technologies, which you have to research via colleges, give you access to certain developments
-basic spawning garrisons are introduced, but very weak mainly
-capital is set, can't mbe moved, irrelevant to the game
-population growth depends on the taxation of the lower class mainly, techs and the set value; growth spawns new minor villages that you can develop to increase the region's wealth; every region has a set number of villages it can spawn, after which population growth is sort of irrelevant

Opinion: this worked really well as you could effectively manage your settlements according to your faction needs (economy, culture, religion) but also according to the importance of the settlement and its geographical position (in a choke point you'd rather build a military minor settlement than an economic one). Large settlements were also harder to control once captured, meaning that an eliminated top faction could respawn, effectively granting a balance between great factions and small ones in favour of the former and some sort of ''historical accuracy''.

Downsides:
-against the AI, the medium tier fort was easier to defend than the star fort in sieges (!)
-the AI in North America and India would not develop natural resources for some reason, or rarely. So when you conquered them, you'd find them undeveloped, despite the fact that the AI was making tons of money (hello Maratha)

Rating 9/10
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Shogun 2 TW:

-All settlements are now the same again.
-Very much like ETW, natural resources on the map can be interacted with and damaged by armies.
-introduction of the food dynamic: granaries and walls line now consume food, while farms produce it, requiring food surplus for the faction, otherwise you get starving armies and revolts
-given the above, for the first time in a TW game you actually don't want to develop your walls to the top level in every faction, because you won't have enough food to support it
-updgrading walls gives you an extra slot for buildings in the settlement
-streets require investment
-technology system further developed
-multiple buildings and unit slots per turn remains
-religion plays mostly the same as before
-basic garrisons are stronger, but that's mainly because the weakest units, the yari ashigaru, are actually pretty strong
-capital is set, can't mbe moved, irrelevant to the game
-growth concept is not present here either, technological research does it


Opinion: The two types system worked well in ETW but isn't missed nor needed in this one, as most factions start as ''equals''. The walls/food/slots system is great as it requires you to plan how you actually want to develop a settlement, if you want to leave it as a basic economic one, an economic powerhouse because it has high fertility or a specific rich economic resource, or a military one because it has some bonuses for troops. It gives great freedom to the player, though it can be complicated for newbyes.

Downsides:
-in many cases, you will finish the game's objectives before achieving top buildings, meaning you'll be missing out on a few top units
-you probably won't be able to create the ''perfect unit'' as in top weapons, charge, or accuracy, because settlements do not have that many slots you can fill with the required buildings to do it

Rating 9/10
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Rome 2 TW:

I think provinces were introduced because CA implemented a significantly larger map compared to Rome 1 (and did a great job with it).

-Every province has 2 to 4 settlements.
-The provincial capital has 5-6 buildings.
-Secondary settlements have 3-4.
-growth returns and allows you to add 1 building, up to the limits mentioned, every time you fullfill a level of growth required, tech is still present (so two elements influence how much you can expand your buildings)
-religion disappears (not needed, sort of irrelevant), cultural differences work as ''religion'' in terms of impact on public order
-there's no investment required for streets and walls, first time in the series (they develop with the rest of the settlement, but not individually), only the provincial capital has walls
-garrisons become stronger as you develop military buildings
-you can no longer interact with natural resources developed on the map
-capital is set, can't be moved, irrelevant to the game
-controlling all of the province grants various bonuses
-food system is further developed
-you can recruit units from settlements even if you are not in that region, but just in the province and they are automatically merged with the main army, which saves 1-3 turns every time you create an army;

Opinion: given the precedent experiences, it feels like what was a ''large settlement'' in ETW has been split in 3-4 ones, with the main one being a bit less relevant and what used to be just individual ''villages''/natural resources on the map being a bit more relevant. This is mainly due to the lack of walls of minor settlements.
In practice, it shouldn't change that much.

If I look at past games, the standard buildings for a secondary settlement that I would build mainly economically were:
-basic walls
-streets
-market
-farm
-public order building
-sometimes religious/cultural

Now the walls and streets upgrades disappear in Rome 2, so in the end it's again 3-4 buildings per settlement, it's actually the same as all the previous games. Yet it feels like the ''province'' is what used to be a single settlement, now split in 4. The map is huge, yet feels smaller in many areas. What used to take dozens of battles and tens of turns, like for example controlling the Middle East as the Seleucids, now can be achieved in.. 15. turns and 0 battles.

The lack of walls that many complained about has a massive impact. You can no longer decide your ''frontier'', the choke point you want to defend at. It's a massive conceptual error. You have massive freedom of choices for the other buildings, but it's all hampered by that limit and very much like M2TW, then the other relatively minor flaws build on that one.

It is accentuated by whether or not you own the full province, especially if you are playing a faction without bonuses that decrease the impact of the presence of other cultures.

Then stronger garrisons also make the AI over rely on them for defense. This creates a vicious circle:

-both the AI and the player will keep armies near or inside the settlement, not for the defenses (that it often lacks) but because settlements add some 5-6 garrison units in battles, often with a pair of decent quality units that can make the decisive difference; this is very noticeable on the autoresolve bar, where the addition of insignificant units regularly results in turning the tide an autoresolved battle
-this leads to a game of numbers, where the player will move 2 stacks to attack the same province, ensuring the numerical superiority instead of fighting the battles themselves and relying on tactical or strategical superiority
-the AI indeed either retaliates with further numbers, or by simply withdrawing, meaning your campaign from the mid game to the end will be the infamous ''walking from settlement to settlement''.
-additionally, there's a units imbalance: very much like M2TW were the imbalance of Italian militias sort of ruined the gameplay, here slingers do that. They are absolutely insane. The era of legions, cataphracts, pikes and elephants is dominated by.... slingers in both autoresolve and manual.

Now, the garrison problem, in theory is not the fault of the province system itself. We could have similar results in non-province systems with large spawning garrisons. However, just like other problems mentioned, it exacerbates already existing problems, namely the elimination of walls for secondary settlements, a notable flaw of the provincial system. Those two combined lead to the negative experience of gameplay: armies walking from settlement to settlement, very few field battles.

Additionally, the fast recruitment resulting from additional slots and automatic merging as long as they are created within the same province, not region, saves a lot of time, which makes the gameplay extremely fast.

Rating: 4/10
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Attila TW:
-religions replace cultures
-food system is developed even further; distribution is provincial and global;
-possibility to raze and abandon settlements
-large variety of buildings for various combinations
-top secondary settlement building adds walls to secondary settlements;
-every province is 3 settlements;

The changes compared to Rome 2, combined with the ''fluid'' gameplay of Attila and the migrations, hide some of the flaws of the provinces system.

The huge ramification of buildings combined with the 4-6 max building per settlement is a rather noticeable limitation. I'm all for shifting towards specialization, but the restrictions here are too heavy and some branches are clearly less useful than others. You'll never be using them, so it feels like they are there just to waste your time and attention.

The fact that food is not distributed not just globally, but provincially, forces you to shift away from specialization in a game that pushes you towards it. I think it's to limit the bonuses cumulating from specializating the province too much, but it further makes many building branches useless.

In the end, you have to make every province balanced in terms of food, public order, religion etc, which indeed feels like a province is a single settlement instead of 3.

If every province is, in the end, a single settlement, then the larger map results in an actually shrunk gameplay.

I don't have that much of experience to fully evaluate it for now. Might edit later.

I haven't played Warhammer but I heard the provinces system is still there. Is it better? When I look at the improvements made by CA from the mistakes in M2TW and the dual system (castle/cities) to the dual in ETW (Major/minor-economic, minor-military), I wonder, can the provinces systems be salvaged?

[Daruwind]

Actually I like Province system more. It is adding one more step between hierarchy city-state changing it into city-province-state. Also building slots are in my opinion a step forward. But the formula of 6 / 4 is little limited in my view. I would change it to like 10 (historical big cities) / 8 (province main cities) / 6 (minor settlements). Also provinies are important for eddicts.

Also walls and roads would be nice as separated buildings. Roads are in all newer titles already tied to development of main building chain. It is possible to mod it into separate buildings however. This is probably due to save building slots especially in Rome 2 / Attila.

Warhammer1
-We can build walls in minor settlement boosting garrison also.
(We can discuss if WH sieges are better or worse. I admire CA to try new things and actually would like them to deeper this concept. Sieges in all titles were quite hard for AI. Instead of multi side attack AI can now worry only in one direction)
-Building slots are still 6 / 4 but not for all factions. Wood Elves has 10 slots and special Tree of World region and are able to build only smaller
outpost in "non-home" regions.
-Factions cannot colonize all regions. For example Dwarfs and Greenskins are limited to mountains. Horde factions cannot settle down.
-Many factions are able to confederate to create one big factions. So usually in late games factions like Greenskins, Dwarfs are piled into one super entity.
-Some factions spread various kinds of corruption which translate to attrition for passing armies. Like vampire corruption, chaos...
-Eddicts available in any complete province.
-Faction capitol cannot be changed (expect by mods - scripts)

Warhammer2
-Factions capitols are now set to have 10 slots while other main cities in provincies are 8 slots. Minor settlements are still 4.

[Basil II the B.S]

I'm not against the idea of the province system at all, but the implementation in Rome 2 just isn't good and what are otherwise minor flaws of the game exacerbate the bad planning of the provinces system itself.

Walls: I'm glad CA added them in Warhammer, they should have never disappeared for minor settlements to begin with. However, you don't want the player or the AI to spam top walls in every settlement. In this case, Shogun 2 had a good system because it made it depend on food, so that only a handful of settlements would get the top tier walls, while the rest would only get the basic.

Indeed, most minor settlements should get only a wooden palisade, but you should have the possibility to build stone walls in key frontier settlements, at a cost. Making it depend on the food system can be complicated as that one from Attila is now a bit more complicated than Shogun or Rome 2, but doable.

Capitols: I'd actually bring back the possibility to move not only the faction ones, but the province ones (within the province), obviously at the cost of losing the extra slots and buildings. You simply don't want to remain stuck with the Parthians at Nisa.

Streets: I think some buildings also improve streets in Attila, I haven't fully tested it yet

Adding 2 more slots to minor settlements to make them 6 instead of 4: I don't think they are needed. If you add walls, those are already 5 and with streets it's 6, and that's normally what you'd do in any other previous game. The limit of 4 forces you to specialize, which while not immediately obvious if you are a kid, is a good idea.

I do think adding a few more slots in capitols however is a good thing. 10 might be excessive but it's the faction capitol so I guess it might work out.

[Anna_Gein]

It does not make sense to maintain walls with food. Walls should cost money upkeep. Wooden walls should be reasonably cheap while the upkeep of stone walls should grow exponentially with their quality.

I wish we would not be so limited with building slot. Watching Gameplay streaming of Warhammer 2 it seems major settlement and capitals have more slot than before. Even then it is not enough.

Frankly I hate the province system. It is inflexible, difficult to manage, adds next to nothing and feels terribly gamey. Because of it there are a lot of non-nonsensical situations such as Lillybaeum (Marsala) revolting because you conquered Syracuse. It is a broken system. I prefer a province system such as the one in Stellaris : You are free to create your own provinces and chose which planets/settlements go to which province.

-growth concept is not present here either, technological research does it

There was still population growth in Empire but it was mostly insignificant. I have never know if it was tied with the settlement wealth. As you said technology, taxes and infrastructures had more influence.

Edit :

Watch out how intuitive it is to create sectors/provinces in Stellaris

[Basil II the B.S]

It does not make sense to maintain walls with food. Walls should cost money upkeep. Wooden walls should be reasonably cheap while the upkeep of stone walls should grow exponentially with their quality.

In Shogun 2 walls added and increased the garrison, hence it makes sense that the garrison consumes food.

Upkeep alone might not prevent players from spamming top tier walls all over the map, so you need a way to balance it out. Top walls should be only for capitols and key strategic settlements, not everywhere. If you do it with upkeep then upper tiers should become heavily expensive and I mean it drains 2k per turn from your income, so that you'll think twice before spamming them.

I wish we would not be so limited with building slot. Watching Gameplay streaming of Warhammer 2 it seems major settlement and capitals have more slot than before. Even then it is not enough.

Unlimited slots makes it way too easy for an experienced player to make tons of money. The last campaign I played with Rome 2 I ended the game with 600k treasury in 180 turns or something like that, on VH and that's with the current system of 6 max for the capital, 4 for the secondary.

Frankly I hate the province system. It is inflexible, difficult to manage, adds next to nothing and feels terribly gamey. Because of it there are a lot of non-nonsensical situations such as Lillybaeum (Marsala) revolting because you conquered Syracuse. It is a broken system. I prefer a province system such as the one in Stellaris : You are free to create your own provinces and chose which planets/settlements go to which province.

Carthage on harder difficulties is indeed insane BECAUSE of the province system and it shows how flawed it actually is.

Due to cultural differences combined with lack of control of the whole province, you'll face riots in Carthago Nova, Ibossym, Caralis and Lilybeum, every 3-4 turns, for the first 20-30 and because you don't control the whole provinces, which you can't even rush:
-Numantia is actually pretty far away and your early units get destroyed by the Spanish swordsmen.
-Alolia is owned by the Etrurian League, with whom you have a ''peace settlement'' from the start, so you can't attack for the first 10 turns.
-the rest of Magna Graecia requires you to go through Syracuse and Rome, meaning a full on investment that and abandoning the other 3.

So in the end you either abandon Sardinia and Sicily, or abandon Spain. Nonetheless, it's a typical example where the other imperfections of the game build on the imperfections of the province system, making it a nightmare.

There was still population growth in Empire but it was mostly insignificant. I have never know if it was tied with the settlement wealth. As you said technology, taxes and infrastructures had more influence.

My bad, I actually forgot that detail.
Population growth in ETW depended heavily on the taxation of the lower class and it worked fine. Population growth would spawn villages, which you could develop and it'd increase the wealth of the region, though there was a set limit of villages you could spawn.

This is noticeable if you play Russia or the Ottoman Empire. There are 3-4 of your starting regions each that have 0 tax income early on, or something like 10. So you can simply set them on tax exemption, because you aren't getting much anyway, let them grow much faster, spawn the villages (it's 1-2 max for those regions anyway), then develop them, develop the governmental building for tax revenue and tax it normally for a decent revenue.

Edit :

Watch out how intuitive it is to create sectors/provinces in Stellaris

If the provinces system is here to stay and it seems like because we are moving towards larger maps, then yeah there should be a way to customize it better. Attila is moving in the right direction with colonizing/abandoning/razing. Maybe they should allow you to be able to go for 2 settlements instead of 4 if you want to, and the two settlements get additional slots (eg max 7 for a secondary settlement instead of max 4), but not too many that entirely compensate for the removal of the other secondary, so that you are forced to choose between centralization and decentralization, each with their advantages.

But yes, a degree of customization for provinces is necessary.

[Anna_Gein]

In Shogun 2 walls added and increased the garrison, hence it makes sense that the garrison consumes food.

Upkeep alone might not prevent players from spamming top tier walls all over the map, so you need a way to balance it out. Top walls should be only for capitols and key strategic settlements, not everywhere. If you do it with upkeep then upper tiers should become heavily expensive and I mean it drains 2k per turn from your income, so that you'll think twice before spamming them.

I do not think there should be any automatic garrison either. I prefer Medieval 2 : aka there are a few free slot to represent locals militia but they are far to few. If you want to gather an important garrison you must spend a lot of money for it. The latter option is both intuitive and realistic. For example during the Hundred Year War the garrison of Calais costed an insane amount of spending for the English Crown it there were only a few hundreds soldiers there.

Food for walls and automatic garrison do not make sense either. Your "real" units in your stack do not cost you food. Why should garrison units cost some ? And its hard to ignore the fact that CA used food as a punishing mechanic in Rome and Attila. Library cost food do yet I have never met a book eating food during my life.

2K by turn is exactly what I had in mind.

Unlimited slots makes it way too easy for an experienced player to make tons of money. The last campaign I played with Rome 2 I ended the game with 600k treasury in 180 turns or something like that, on VH and that's with the current system of 6 max for the capital, 4 for the secondary.

The way you describe it, limited slot is an inefficient balance system anyway.

Imo the larger issue is how CA represents economy and taxes. Honestly I do not understand what CA is trying to portrait with buildings. Some are definitively state infrastructure (barrack, walls, palace ...). Others like fishing port make no sense.

The economy is badly represented. For instance why should market automatically give 500/1000 "wealth from trade" ? Should it not boost existing wealth as it did organically in RTW/M2TW ? Similarly why are "wealth from trade" and "wealth from maritime trade" two different things ? It is counter intuitive.

I rather deal away from all theses fictive income and retry from scratch the system. I loved decentralized buildings in ETW and NTW. I wish something along theses lines but each of them becoming independent settlement. This would be a good start imo.

Provinces should only be a tool to ease the management. Public Order, culture, and faith should be independent on each settlement. Settlements' economy should be inter-dependent but only in an organic system such as in RTW.

I wish TW design returned to its older philosophy. RTW and M2TW were simple, intuitive and in depth. By comparison R2TW and Atilla are counter-intuitive and superficial without becoming more difficult.

[Ygraine]

The way the province system works in Rome 2 makes zero sense.

For example culture doesn't seem to spread between provinces (adjacent, like in Shogun 2), and it's a mystery to me how public disorder sustained in for example western Sicily will prompt a rebellion in southern Italy. It just makes no sense at all.

[eXistenZ]

I like the province system. Its a step up from the "just build everything", and optimizing your provinces is a good gameplay element.

However there should indeed be a distinction between provincial capitals and really big cities like Rome, Athens, Carthage, etc... And along with some overlapping province influence is also a good idea (like a province that exerts a lot of culture influence due to tempels also having some effects on neighbouring provinces, or improved infrastructure making adjacent provinces richer)

[Basil II the B.S]

I do not think there should be any automatic garrison either. I prefer Medieval 2 : aka there are a few free slot to represent locals militia but they are far to few. If you want to gather an important garrison you must spend a lot of money for it. The latter option is both intuitive and realistic. For example during the Hundred Year War the garrison of Calais costed an insane amount of spending for the English Crown it there were only a few hundreds soldiers there.

The problem with the no automatic garrison is that you will be filling any non-frontier garrison with paesants, because they are the cheapest unit and you won't need anything more to keep the order balance. So once you have a large empire, then 80% of your army is actually paesants, except your standing stacks.

Speaking of M2TW, castles would have benefited immensely from an automatic garrison. Because as it was, you don't want to keep any character or garrison in them due to the bad traits and you'd get and the very limited number of free upkeep slots. So the player wouldn't use them unless absolutely necessary, while the AI didn't use castles at all, sometimes leaving them completely empty or with just 1 general gathering a ton of bad traits. An auto-garrison would have made castles the defensive bastions they were supposed to be.

Food for walls and automatic garrison do not make sense either. Your "real" units in your stack do not cost you food. Why should garrison units cost some ? And its hard to ignore the fact that CA used food as a punishing mechanic in Rome and Attila. Library cost food do yet I have never met a book eating food during my life.

2K by turn is exactly what I had in mind.

Doesn't a garrison consume food? Attila works like this: you produce X number food per turn, you consume Y number food per turn. A garrison consumption should be in that Y. It makes sense. Though if we want to go for realism, then it should consume it's dose of food per turn AND have an upkeep. If you balance it well, it can work fine and I'm looking mostly for a game balance here.

The way you describe it, limited slot is an inefficient balance system anyway.

Imo the larger issue is how CA represents economy and taxes. Honestly I do not understand what CA is trying to portrait with buildings. Some are definitively state infrastructure (barrack, walls, palace ...). Others like fishing port make no sense.

I don't mind fishing ports because again, your faction should need food. And I assume it's there to avoid that the player spams military ports all over the place. That would be unrealistic.

And yes, Rome 2 lacks balance, badly. It's too easy, especially if you have played Shogun 2. I normally specialize settlements since the times of Rome 1, Shogun 2 forces you to know everything you do, otherwise you won't survive realm divide. It forces you to specialize, earn your 20k per turn to hoard 150-200k for realm divide, because in those 10-20 turns after you trigger it, your income dries up and if you haven't hoarded wealth, you will lose as everyone turns on you progressively and you lose trade treaties.

Rome 2? You specialize, get your 20k income per turn and then there's no realm divide, so you keep hoarding and hoarding and hoarding even though you have 9 stacks and 5 fleets standing.

The economy is badly represented. For instance why should market automatically give 500/1000 "wealth from trade" ? Should it not boost existing wealth as it did organically in RTW/M2TW ? Similarly why are "wealth from trade" and "wealth from maritime trade" two different things ? It is counter intuitive.

Since ETW they split the ''wealth stock'' (which gets taxed) and the growth per turn (that does not). It makes sense in real terms. One is wealth accumulated, the other is a flow, aka ''GDP''. I suppose they took notes from accounting. It makes sense, you have your accounting window for your faction.

Though yeah some things are dumb, why is maritime trade separated from trade? No idea. I understand that they went for specialization, I'm fine with it, but some concepts are too forced.

I rather deal away from all theses fictive income and retry from scratch the system. I loved decentralized buildings in ETW and NTW. I wish something along theses lines but each of them becoming independent settlement. This would be a good start imo.

I agree here, I found the ETW system one of the most interesting ever. But the next step further was to simply split the settlement, which is what they did with Rome 2.

Instead of 1 settlement and 2 to 6-7 villages per region, you have one capital and 1-3 secondary settlements per region (the province) which you can specialize. However it doesn't work well for a variety of reasons I mentioned in the OP.

Provinces should only be a tool to ease the management. Public Order, culture, and faith should be independent on each settlement. Settlements' economy should be inter-dependent but only in an organic system such as in RTW.

It does ease the management. It's actually too easy.

Once you have 20 provinces, each allows you to check 3-4 settlements all together, so while a large empire should take time to manage, it takes just a few clicks. This is actually why Rome 2 is too easy.

I wish TW design returned to its older philosophy. RTW and M2TW were simple, intuitive and in depth. By comparison R2TW and Atilla are counter-intuitive and superficial without becoming more difficult.

To be fair, Rome 1 was a huge leap from its predecessors too and it worked wonders. Rome 2 tried to add more depth without making it harder, but it made it too easy and everything is superficial.

Conquering the Temple of Artemis in Sardis in Rome 1 made a huge impact on your faction. Now you have a dozen wonders that you never even notice because it's one of the quadrillion of bonuses. Nothing even matters because the game should be accessible to kids too, and that's fine, but the goals of adding depth and keeping it easy clash too hard.

The way the province system works in Rome 2 makes zero sense.

For example culture doesn't seem to spread between provinces (adjacent, like in Shogun 2), and it's a mystery to me how public disorder sustained in for example western Sicily will prompt a rebellion in southern Italy. It just makes no sense at all.

I suppose Western Sicilians don't want to be in the same administrative units as Southern Italians?

[Emperor Arcturus Mengsk]

I've played every total war to date, and I think Attila has by far the best settlement system they've made so far. I would like it to be even more detailed but compared to all other titles it is the best in my opinion.

You have to balance:

1) Public Order
2) Sanitation
3) Religion
4) Food
5) You can assign governors to apply edicts through the family tree

It's true it's not rocket science, but you can imagine my surprise when I bought Warhammer and found out the settlement system was reduced to just public order and nothing else.

[Ygraine]

I suppose Western Sicilians don't want to be in the same administrative units as Southern Italians?

You misunderstood me, the Italians are the ones rebelling. It makes zero sense.

Sure you might come up with some (extremely unlikely) scenario where it could have happened, but that's more like making up an excuse for a faulty mechanic than actual believable event.

[Alwyn]

I like the province system. Its a step up from the "just build everything", and optimizing your provinces is a good gameplay element.

However there should indeed be a distinction between provincial capitals and really big cities like Rome, Athens, Carthage, etc... And along with some overlapping province influence is also a good idea (like a province that exerts a lot of culture influence due to tempels also having some effects on neighbouring provinces, or improved infrastructure making adjacent provinces richer)

I agree; your ideas of major cities being more important, as well as overlapping province influence (as in Shogun II) look good to me.

The lack of walls that many complained about has a massive impact. You can no longer decide your ''frontier'', the choke point you want to defend at. It's a massive conceptual error.

Different players prefer different things. I prefer the (relative) lack of walls. While I enjoyed Rome Total War a lot, battles at walled towns got repetitive. Make a hole in the wooden walls of the settlement, fight at the breach, then fight your way to the city centre, over and over again. I enjoy the greater variety of battles which Rome II offers (battles in walled cities, unwalled towns, ports, ambushes and open field battles.) Yes, some players are disappointed that they cannot use the same methods to create a frontier which we used in earlier games (a strong army in a fort or walled city on each frontier) in Rome II. As I see it, this makes the game more strategic and challenging. There are ways to create a defensible frontier in Rome II, for example:-

- You mentioned choke points. While many areas of the Rome II Grand Campaign map are open plains, there are choke points in places, such as in gaps between forests and in mountain passes. For example, the bridge east of Burdigala in south-western Gaul can be a choke point. There are ways of getting around it, but there are ways to deal with that.

- Diplomacy and spying matter more when we can't guard every border.

- We can protect a border by creating a 'buffer' of liberated states, client states or satrapies, as some nations historically did. We might not be able to afford a full-stack army to defend a region, but the tribe who traditionally owned it might be able to do so, if they were liberated or a client state.

Once you have 20 provinces, each allows you to check 3-4 settlements all together, so while a large empire should take time to manage, it takes just a few clicks. This is actually why Rome 2 is too easy.

I prefer being able to manage a large empire by clicking six times (if I have six provinces) rather than about 18 times (to see each region in six provinces.) Would you really want a game to be more challenging simply by requiring you to click 18 times rather than 6 times to see the same information? As I see it, if Rome 2 is too easy, it is because of the relatively passive campaign AI. This can be fixed with mods such as a More Aggressive AI mod and the Guaranteed Major Faction Empires mod (there's also a More AI Armies mod, if the other mods don't offer sufficient challenge. Alternatively, I've seen an AI mod which also offered more AI armies as a built-in feature).

[AnthoniusII]

Once up a time I wrote about R2 system when the game was about to have its 1st patch. CA/SEGA not only DID NOT respond but actually continued the same way in to Attila TW.
My sugestions were based on well tested and already implemended features of previus TW games that the codes are properties of CA/SEGA.
1ST: Like ALL previus TW games strat_map model and battle map one must have direct connection. You can not have A HUGE strat_map city and when a siege begines you find your self facing a walled village! Its rediculus.
So...Making a settlement bigger must be connected to the poppulation surplus that will lead to a bigger city that will unlock a free building space.
2nd: Too few building slots. Even with that feature CA/SEGA could use ETW province infrustucture feature that is not part of the settlements them selvs. For example: Roads, border forts or border watch towers etc.
3rd: Walls must be a building of its own...like in Rome 1! But because Siece AI of Rome II and Attila are so stupid CA chosen unwallled settlements or -in Attila- partialy walled settlements or walls that melt by rain to allow AI to run into the cities!
4th: More reasonable provinces. For example Sicily should be a province of its own with the HUGE city of Syracuse as its capital!
Conclusion: Solutions are inside previus TW games but no one had the time? to look for them or try to make them work for Rome II and Attila.
Unless B/CAI wont reach previus TW standards settlements and provinces are doomed to exist as they are because AI wont be smart enough to take them by realistic force.

[Basil II the B.S]

Different players prefer different things. I prefer the (relative) lack of walls. While I enjoyed Rome Total War a lot, battles at walled towns got repetitive. Make a hole in the wooden walls of the settlement, fight at the breach, then fight your way to the city centre, over and over again.I enjoy the greater variety of battles which Rome II offers (battles in walled cities, unwalled towns, ports, ambushes and open field battles.)

As opposed to... fight in the city center because that's where the AI amasses troops in non-walled settlements? There's no variety in there.

There is variety between the walled and the non-walled ones, but that's mainly because walled settlements have multiple capture points rather than one. It doesn't have anything to with walls.
A Gallic wooden wall settlements has the same capture points as stone walled Carthage.

There's also another, huge, downside to the lack of palisades if you have siege units, then the AI is going to get slaughetered:
-it will mass its army in the capture point;
-your siege units unlike previous games, have 4 ballistas/onagers/scorpion per unit instead of 2;
-you will fire in the mass of AI controlled troops, getting 1200 kills by the time your siege units run out of ammo;
-there's no palisade with its wooden towers to keep your siege units away

Yes, some players are disappointed that they cannot use the same methods to create a frontier which we used in earlier games (a strong army in a fort or walled city on each frontier) in Rome II. As I see it, this makes the game more strategic and challenging. There are ways to create a defensible frontier in Rome II, for example:-

It does not. This is an open question, but do you really think that Rome 2 is harder than Rome 1?

Because to me, it's the easiest game of the series I have played, by far. Shogun 2 being the hardest. I added an explanation of what the no-walls/larger spawned garrison does to the gameplay: spam stacks to win. Keeping in mind that if you develop your settlement properly, you can create a 20 units stack in 2-3 turns, you'll be moving 2-3 stacks at the time to outnumber the AI, which isn't able to fight back.

So from the mid game to the end of the game, it's your 2-3 stacks walking from settlement to settlement. You fight zero battles on your own simply because every time you'll be outnumbering the AI so bad, there's no need.

- You mentioned choke points. While many areas of the Rome II Grand Campaign map are open plains, there are choke points in places, such as in gaps between forests and in mountain passes. For example, the bridge east of Burdigala in south-western Gaul can be a choke point. There are ways of getting around it, but there are ways to deal with that.

Bridges have always been choke points, you don't see me complaining about them or the lack of. How do you think people stopped the hordes in Barbarian Invasion or Med 2?

- Diplomacy and spying matter more when we can't guard every border.

- We can protect a border by creating a 'buffer' of liberated states, client states or satrapies, as some nations historically did. We might not be able to afford a full-stack army to defend a region, but the tribe who traditionally owned it might be able to do so, if they were liberated or a client state.

Diplomacy is better and that's why you dont see me criticizing it. This isn't necessarily a thread ''Omg Rome 2 is so bad'', it's trying to give a constructive criticism of why the province system had such a massive negative feedback.

Indeed, client sates/satrapies work much better as opposed to Rome 1 where they hardly ever accept it and everyone attacks you on VH. Medieval 2 after all the patches had a decent way to make reliable vassals. Shogun 2 has an alright mechanic, but the Realm Divide tends to dominate how you plan your game.

I prefer being able to manage a large empire by clicking six times (if I have six provinces) rather than about 18 times (to see each region in six provinces.) Would you really want a game to be more challenging simply by requiring you to click 18 times rather than 6 times to see the same information? As I see it, if Rome 2 is too easy, it is because of the relatively passive campaign AI. This can be fixed with mods such as a More Aggressive AI mod and the Guaranteed Major Faction Empires mod (there's also a More AI Armies mod, if the other mods don't offer sufficient challenge. Alternatively, I've seen an AI mod which also offered more AI armies as a built-in feature).

Large empires are supposed to suffer from overstretch.

As for the more aggressive AI, it'd turn into what was Rome 1, the AI on harder difficulties just attacks the player mercilessly on every side, disrespecting treaties like they don't matter (and it sort of does that sometimes in Rome 2 as well, it's just less common). With the presence of minor factions being able to field 2 stacks despite having 1 settlement, instead of the big ''rebels'' faction of Rome 1, it'd turn into a nightmare. You will be begging for stone walls on every settlement, because that's what kept the crazy AI at bay in Rome 1.

[Alwyn]

As opposed to... fight in the city center because that's where the AI amasses troops in non-walled settlements? There's no variety in there.

As I see it, battles in unwalled settlements are different from battles in walled settlements partly because there is no fight at the breach. This means that there is no opportunity to fire ranged weapons or siege artillery into a big blob of enemy troops guarding the breach, as I could in RTW.

There is also the difference that the attacker can get onto walls at any point with siege ladders, but there isn't a way to get onto the tops of buildings in an unwalled settlement, so choke points are important. When I play as a Greek faction, I enjoy the challenge of defending an unwalled town against a larger attacking force. An army based on hoplites and cavalry or hoplites and skirmishers is particularly suitable for defending unwalled towns, while other factions can find this harder. For me, this provides another example of the variety which Rome II offers.

There's also another, huge, downside to the lack of palisades if you have siege units, then the AI is going to get slaughetered:
-it will mass its army in the capture point;
-your siege units unlike previous games, have 4 ballistas/onagers/scorpion per unit instead of 2;
-you will fire in the mass of AI controlled troops, getting 1200 kills by the time your siege units run out of ammo;
-there's no palisade with its wooden towers to keep your siege units away

That sounds disappointing. My experience is different. When I bring siege equipment to an unwalled city, the AI usually attacks when my artillery gets within range. Sometimes I get plenty of kills with the siege weapons, but not always. It varies - sometimes the AI charges while I'm moving my artillery forward, and my artillery only fires once or twice (if at all) before the enemy charge into melee.

It does not. This is an open question, but do you really think that Rome 2 is harder than Rome 1?

I understand that you think differently about whether being unable to maintain a strong force on every border makes Rome II more strategic and challenging. As I see it, it does, because it involves choosing between options and planning ahead, not using the same defensive strategy every time.

You asked whether I really think Rome II is harder. For me, this depends on the faction you're playing and the stage of the campaign. In RTW, I found it easy to defeat barbarian towns in Gaul, Britain and Iberia as the Romans. The same tactics - break a hole in the wooden wall, hit the enemy blob on the far side of the wall with ranged weapons, send sword infantry to break the remaining warriors and to defeat the last stand in the centre - worked in the same way every time. I find the early stages of a Roman campaign more challenging in Rome II. Barbarians seem to use more sword units earlier in Rome II, whereas they seemed to rely more on spear-using warbands in RTW. However, in RTW I found the Roman Civil War to be very difficult - the AI Roman factions usually had more late-era, high-tier units than I did. Also, I find playing as the Iceni in Rome II easier than playing as the Britons in RTW - barbarians in Rome II seem (to me, at least) to have better rosters.

Because to me, it's the easiest game of the series I have played, by far. Shogun 2 being the hardest. I added an explanation of what the no-walls/larger spawned garrison does to the gameplay: spam stacks to win. Keeping in mind that if you develop your settlement properly, you can create a 20 units stack in 2-3 turns, you'll be moving 2-3 stacks at the time to outnumber the AI, which isn't able to fight back.

So from the mid game to the end of the game, it's your 2-3 stacks walking from settlement to settlement. You fight zero battles on your own simply because every time you'll be outnumbering the AI so bad, there's no need.

Yes, 'spam stacks to win' can work - however, that's true for any Total War game, isn't it? At least Rome II imposes a maximum number of stacks.

I agree that Shogun II is very challenging! However, I don't think this has much to do with the fact that we attack walled castles (instead of unwalled settlements) in Shogun II. For me, what makes Shogun II challenging is that the AI factions expand aggressively, creating large rival empires. That's why I play Rome II with a A More Aggressive AI mod and the Guaranteed Major Faction Empires mod. For example, in the map at the end of Chapter Twenty-six of Andraste's Children, you can see that Rome controls north-west Africa (in-game, I can see that Rome controls the coast of Africa from that point all of the way to Carthage) and has crossed into southern Spain. I also like the way that (as in Shogun II) different factions succeed in different campaigns, with Guaranteed Major Faction Empires. I've seen the Boii conquer Italy in one campaign and Rome invade Gaul in another.

Bridges have always been choke points, you don't see me complaining about them or the lack of. How do you think people stopped the hordes in Barbarian Invasion or Med 2?

I didn't think you were complaining about bridges. I thought that you were complaining that you couldn't define and defend your frontier, because you previously said:-

The lack of walls that many complained about has a massive impact. You can no longer decide your ''frontier'', the choke point you want to defend at. It's a massive conceptual error.

I simply pointed out that there are ways to defend your frontier, such as using bridges or mountain passes as choke points, diplomacy and using liberated states or client states. I don't see how 'bridges have always been choke points' make a difference to whether we can use bridges to defend borders in Rome II.

As for the more aggressive AI, it'd turn into what was Rome 1, the AI on harder difficulties just attacks the player mercilessly on every side, disrespecting treaties like they don't matter (and it sort of does that sometimes in Rome 2 as well, it's just less common). With the presence of minor factions being able to field 2 stacks despite having 1 settlement, instead of the big ''rebels'' faction of Rome 1, it'd turn into a nightmare. You will be begging for stone walls on every settlement, because that's what kept the crazy AI at bay in Rome 1.

Yes, I imagine it could cause the AI on harder difficulties to attack the player mercilessly on every side - so a 'hard' or 'very hard' campaign would live up to its name. I don't play on harder difficulties.

While it won't work for everyone, playing on Normal with a More Aggressive AI and Guaranteed Major Faction Empires works well for me. The AI doesn't attack mercilessly on every side. Friendly states offer treaties, hostile states attack. There are more field battles and more opportunities to defend settlements when hostile AI factions are more likely to send armies to attack, providing more variety. Because some AI factions build large empires, my mid-to-late game experience is not the same as yours:-

Because to me, it's the easiest game of the series I have played, by far. Shogun 2 being the hardest. I added an explanation of what the no-walls/larger spawned garrison does to the gameplay: spam stacks to win. Keeping in mind that if you develop your settlement properly, you can create a 20 units stack in 2-3 turns, you'll be moving 2-3 stacks at the time to outnumber the AI, which isn't able to fight back.

So from the mid game to the end of the game, it's your 2-3 stacks walking from settlement to settlement. You fight zero battles on your own simply because every time you'll be outnumbering the AI so bad, there's no need.

That's your experience. In my current Iceni campaign (see the map at the end of the chapter), the AI Arverni are approaching my southern border with three armies. I have one army to defend that border. Their only chance is to defend the bridge east of Burdigala. In northern Gaul, a full-stack Atrebartes army has taken Cenabum from me. While my other army in Gaul marches north to retake Cenabum, the Arverni have a fleet of warships and another of transports off the west coast of Gaul. You can see the enemy armies and fleets on the campaign map which I linked to. Iceni territory in Gaul is threatened from the south, north and west simultaneously. Of course, I could raise additional armies to make this more manageable (and I have other options). My point is that simply that I'm not 'walking from settlement to settlement ... fighting zero battles on my own because I'm outnumbering the AI so badly, there's no need' - my experience is different.

[Basil II the B.S]

As I see it, battles in unwalled settlements are different from battles in walled settlements partly because there is no fight at the breach. This means that there is no opportunity to fire ranged weapons or siege artillery into a big blob of enemy troops guarding the breach, as I could in RTW.

There is also the difference that the attacker can get onto walls at any point with siege ladders, but there isn't a way to get onto the tops of buildings in an unwalled settlement, so choke points are important. When I play as a Greek faction, I enjoy the challenge of defending an unwalled town against a larger attacking force. An army based on hoplites and cavalry or hoplites and skirmishers is particularly suitable for defending unwalled towns, while other factions can find this harder. For me, this provides another example of the variety which Rome II offers.

That sounds disappointing. My experience is different. When I bring siege equipment to an unwalled city, the AI usually attacks when my artillery gets within range. Sometimes I get plenty of kills with the siege weapons, but not always. It varies - sometimes the AI charges while I'm moving my artillery forward, and my artillery only fires once or twice (if at all) before the enemy charge into melee.

The thing is, in the unwalled settlement, it won't blogbbehind palisades, it will blob in the capture points or the streets. And yes, the AI actually tries to come out once my siege units start firing, but charging in a relatively tight street towards firing siege units actually makes it worse. Especially because many units lose the formation, so flaming rounds become even more effective as they hit multiple units each. By the time they are outside the settlement and close to the siege units, they rout, because they face untouched heavy infantry.

Now we can debate all day about the AI flaws, those are harder to fix, but we shouldn't make it harder for the AI.

I understand that you think differently about whether being unable to maintain a strong force on every border makes Rome II more strategic and challenging. As I see it, it does, because it involves choosing between options and planning ahead, not using the same defensive strategy every time.

It doesn't. 1 full stack + the garrison solves any autoresolve problem. And the AI hardly ever dares to attack, because it can't outnumber my stack+garrison.

So instead of having a force defending regular frontier attacks, I have a force scaring away the AI and never fighting anyone.

You asked whether I really think Rome II is harder. For me, this depends on the faction you're playing and the stage of the campaign. In RTW, I found it easy to defeat barbarian towns in Gaul, Britain and Iberia as the Romans. The same tactics - break a hole in the wooden wall, hit the enemy blob on the far side of the wall with ranged weapons, send sword infantry to break the remaining warriors and to defeat the last stand in the centre - worked in the same way every time. I find the early stages of a Roman campaign more challenging in Rome II. Barbarians seem to use more sword units earlier in Rome II, whereas they seemed to rely more on spear-using warbands in RTW. However, in RTW I found the Roman Civil War to be very difficult - the AI Roman factions usually had more late-era, high-tier units than I did. Also, I find playing as the Iceni in Rome II easier than playing as the Britons in RTW - barbarians in Rome II seem (to me, at least) to have better rosters.

Rome in Rome 2 is ''harder'', early on because it's 1 faction instead of 3 allied with each other that can't break.
Carthage is also harder at the beginning because it's severely punished by the system of provinces and cultural differences hampering public order (arguably it's the faction with the hardest beginning in any Total War game ever). The problem is that if you progress in the game... it gets easier, a lot easier.

Because provinces put an incentive to complete them, so that they are easy to control in terms of public order and get economic bonuses. So the game is ''hard'' if you don't fully control many provinces, if you do, there's basically no challenge.

Now, given the huge incentive to complete provinces, you will be rushing to do that at every occasion, meaning there's too much incentive to make the game simpler.

The difficulty on the game shouldn't rely on the player masochism.

Yes, 'spam stacks to win' can work - however, that's true for any Total War game, isn't it? At least Rome II imposes a maximum number of stacks.

I agree that Shogun II is very challenging! However, I don't think this has much to do with the fact that we attack walled castles (instead of unwalled settlements) in Shogun II. For me, what makes Shogun II challenging is that the AI factions expand aggressively, creating large rival empires. That's why I play Rome II with a A More Aggressive AI mod and the Guaranteed Major Faction Empires mod. For example, in the map at the end of Chapter Twenty-six of Andraste's Children, you can see that Rome controls north-west Africa (in-game, I can see that Rome controls the coast of Africa from that point all of the way to Carthage) and has crossed into southern Spain. I also like the way that (as in Shogun II) different factions succeed in different campaigns, with Guaranteed Major Faction Empires. I've seen the Boii conquer Italy in one campaign and Rome invade Gaul in another.

The main difficulties of Shogun were that unless you control the 4 trade nodes of Kyushu, you won't be making much money. You also can't rush too much, because it'll trigger Real Divide and then everyone jumps at your throat, which will destroy your trade and income.

Unlike Rome 2, where you can easily have an economy with 20k income per turn without risking a massive coalition against you.

I didn't think you were complaining about bridges. I thought that you were complaining that you couldn't define and defend your frontier, because you previously said:-



I simply pointed out that there are ways to defend your frontier, such as using bridges or mountain passes as choke points, diplomacy and using liberated states or client states. I don't see how 'bridges have always been choke points' make a difference to whether we can use bridges to defend borders in Rome II.

It's simply about the number of options. Sometimes you have bridges, sometimes you have great hilltops, sometimes you have none, hence you might have to invest heavily in the defenses of your settlement. But now you can't, you can just overstack it and then the AI doesn't attack.

Yes, I imagine it could cause the AI on harder difficulties to attack the player mercilessly on every side - so a 'hard' or 'very hard' campaign would live up to its name. I don't play on harder difficulties.

While it won't work for everyone, playing on Normal with a More Aggressive AI and Guaranteed Major Faction Empires works well for me. The AI doesn't attack mercilessly on every side. Friendly states offer treaties, hostile states attack. There are more field battles and more opportunities to defend settlements when hostile AI factions are more likely to send armies to attack, providing more variety. Because some AI factions build large empires, my mid-to-late game experience is not the same as yours:-

You wouldn't notice you are playing on VH unless you fight battles, but there's so much incentive to avoid doing that...

That's your experience. In my current Iceni campaign (see the map at the end of the chapter), the AI Arverni are approaching my southern border with three armies. I have one army to defend that border. Their only chance is to defend the bridge east of Burdigala. In northern Gaul, a full-stack Atrebartes army has taken Cenabum from me. While my other army in Gaul marches north to retake Cenabum, the Arverni have a fleet of warships and another of transports off the west coast of Gaul. You can see the enemy armies and fleets on the campaign map which I linked to. Iceni territory in Gaul is threatened from the south, north and west simultaneously. Of course, I could raise additional armies to make this more manageable (and I have other options). My point is that simply that I'm not 'walking from settlement to settlement ... fighting zero battles on my own because I'm outnumbering the AI so badly, there's no need' - my experience is different.

You are still in the early game.

The early game is rather competitive for most factions, if you have read my posts, including this one, my main complaint is that the game gets progressively easier, especially in the mid game.
In Rome 1, Med 2, Empire and Shogun 2, my total stacking of armies used to be 3, max 4 armies, and 1-2 fleets. I have never been a guy that overstacks.

In Rome 2, in the mid game, I run with 6 stacks and 3 fleets on average, that then become 9 and 4-5 for the last part, all of this despite having an income per turn of 20k and it's on VH.

This is mostly because of the huge bonuses I can pack up by specializing in provinces system and which is further enhanced by completing a province and possibly using edicts. It's just too easy.

[Anna_Gein]

Are we discussing the province system and the settlement management or are we discussing how the AI react to it and how balance is done in TW titles ?

[Basil II the B.S]

Technically I'd focus only on the province/settlement system. The AI will always have limitations, I don't mind. The discussion shifted to that only because AI's flaws worsen the flaws of the province/settlement system.

[AnthoniusII]

Are we discussing the province system and the settlement management or are we discussing how the AI react to it and how balance is done in TW titles ?

Actually BOTH...Why? Because AI determins the shape of the settlements in game.
In Rome I AI could summon 2-3 armies and besiege -atleast for one turn- your walled city.
When battle started EACH AI army had its own siege equipment (rams, ladders, tunnels, siege towers) that deployed IN A DIFFERENT part of the city's walls (surrounded the city) making defence hard to make.
In Rome II and Attila AI can not do what a TW game could 15 years ago... So...CA/SEGA had to find a way AI to be able to invade in a settlement. Walls disapeared in Rome II (nottice that when AI besieges a walled city no matter the total number of AI armies ONLY the 1st one has siege equipment and if those armies are rebels they use ONLY 1 ladder), but in Attila walled cities (exept capitals) have huge un walled gaps. Also Attila walled settlements have NOT walls but dirt and no towers but something that look Church bell towers like in Age of Empires II! When AI has siege equipment it realy does not has to use it because walls melt by the rain !

[Alwyn]

The early game is rather competitive for most factions, if you have read my posts, including this one, my main complaint is that the game gets progressively easier, especially in the mid game.
In Rome 1, Med 2, Empire and Shogun 2, my total stacking of armies used to be 3, max 4 armies, and 1-2 fleets. I have never been a guy that overstacks.

In Rome 2, in the mid game, I run with 6 stacks and 3 fleets on average, that then become 9 and 4-5 for the last part, all of this despite having an income per turn of 20k and it's on VH.

This is mostly because of the huge bonuses I can pack up by specializing in provinces system and which is further enhanced by completing a province and possibly using edicts. It's just too easy.

Yes, I have read your posts. You're arguing that Rome II becomes too easy from the mid-game onwards. For you, this is "mostly" caused by specializing in provinces, completing provinces and using edicts.

While I agree that the economy gets easier in the mid-game and that specialized provinces contribute to this, I draw a different conclusion. I don't blame the province system. Regions can be specialised in Total War games which don't have provinces. Whether a TW game has provinces or not, a large empire tends to become wealthy.

As I see it, this is what is supposed to happen. Historically, large empires tended to be wealthy, unless their treasuries were drained by civil wars or external conflicts. For me, this also contributes to more enjoyable game-play. As my nation grows, it faces different challenges in different stages of development. With the mods I use, the challenge in the mid-game onwards comes from large rival empires which expand aggressively and which do attack the player - and not just in the early game. Even if you wouldn't want to use a More Aggressive AI (because, in combination with higher difficulty levels, AI factions would attack the player too often and without reason), I wonder if you would like to try Guaranteed Major Faction Empires, so that you'll have more powerful rivals in the mid-game, to provide more of a challenge?

You mentioned not being able to have a large income without having a 'massive coalition' against you in Shogun II. I wonder if that is what you would prefer in Rome II - an equivalent of Realm Divide? I wonder if a mod exists, or could be made, which would increase the diplomatic penalties for the player's faction at higher Imperium levels (and, if you wanted that option, increase the penalties to the loyalty of rival parties within your faction). Perhaps, in the end, our preferences aren't so different? (I like the challenge of large rival empires, you would like the challenge of a coalition of nations.)

The difficulty on the game shouldn't rely on the player masochism.

I agree - that is another reason why I prefer the province system. Clicking 24 times to manage each region when you could click 8 times to manage each province seems like masochism to me.

When we discussed whether the removal of the ability to add walls to a city requires more strategic game-play, you wrote that:-

It doesn't. 1 full stack + the garrison solves any autoresolve problem. And the AI hardly ever dares to attack, because it can't outnumber my stack+garrison.

However, in Rome II I can't put a full stack in every border city (unless I'm in a corner of the map, or a similarly fortunate position). In the early game, I can't afford that many full stacks. In the mid game, there are too many border cities to put a full stack in every one. That is why I use different strategies, such as diplomacy, spying or creating a 'buffer' zone of liberated states, client states or satrapies. The province system can play a role here, too. When another faction invaded, and when the loss of some regions triggered the the secession of an entire province (I saw this in a campaign as Rome), the combination of external and internal threats can be an enjoyable challenge.