HotFix1.11 Download and Feedback

[dvk901]

Here is the new hotfix. Give it a try...but to be honest, a longer campaign is going to be necessary to see how some of the settings will work.



http://files.filefront.com/Hotfix111.../fileinfo.html


Just install as before in RTW folder. No need to run any batch file.

I THINK it will be OK with any saved game, but it will change it a lot...so watch for unhappy towns and cities after installing.


Changes:

Massive changes to economy....many new 'zones of economic expense'...meaning, you take a region there, and it will cost money via lost income.
Requirement for happiness once Governors Palace and Proconsuls Palace built...farms, health and markets.
All happiness or Law bonuses removed from 'military buildings...so you get nothing but troops from them.
All Greek units reviewed, many given better, tougher stats so they perform better against barbs and Romans.
Likewise, Eastern 'greek-style' units beefed up a little.
Roman Republican units given slightly better defense and offense to offset lower numbers.
All Legions given slight boost in secondary weapon, again, to offset lesser numbers.
Barbarians untouched.
Other misc. tweaks, including more starting money for some factions, and slight economic boosts for Spain, Dacia, Seleucid.

[dvk901]

Didn't anybody see this? No one has downloaded it? What's up?

[Squid]

I won't be able to look at it until tomorrow, but I'm very interested in trying it out.

[dvk901]

One thing I've noticed in restarting a campaign is that I have the money to build things....that didn't change, but I'm HAVING to build things to keep happiness above 100%. It's going in the right direction.....no more 300% happiness...more in the 100-180's in order to keep taxes up there. I have a feeling that as the campaign progresses, this will get more difficult.

I am concerned, though, that as you get into conquered territories, you find many things already built. The negative income bonuses may have to reflect this and take away more income.

[GershomPatmos]

I dunno about dl'g it...lol. The only way I was getting those happiness values in the first place was by exterminating the existing populations then building up from there. I would hate to have to exterminate cities more than once. What are you using for garrisons? Just governors/procunsols? Or you using light infantry also? I usually exterminate, leave a governor (and maybe 1 or 2 cheap light infantry in early stages), then drop to a single governor. In the early stages of my Roman campaign (though I have quite a few campaigns going)...the only real annoyance is archers/elite archers firing at me. I try to take them out with equites or something, but those stupid spearmen are always nearby, so I attack, then retreat (with casualties usually), then engage, wait for their cavalry to be busied, then attack their archers with my cavalry.

Anyways - later,
Gersh

[dvk901]

My tactics exactly, for the most part. These new settings will make it harder to keep people happy, but you can.

[Deus ret.]

I tried the fix in the last couple of hours and I like it! Can't tell too much since I I didn't get too far (fortunately it's save game compatible, though) but the concept sounds good. Buildings are now balanced better and make more sense overall. Let's see how the public order thingy develops as cities grow....

Just one thing I noticed, Epirus can recruit Elite Hoplites already on the first level of barracks, before auxiliary or even levy pikes become available. Maybe something became messed up?

edit: Oh, and the new stats for some Greek units are nice indeed. Too bad I'm still battling other Greeks (darn free people) atm

[Angel]

From the looks of it, it seem dvk you put alot of good tweakage. I dont mind people tweaking my work and so keep on tweaking. Ill take a look at the new edu.txt and see what youve done. So I can learn and move on. My at latest work will be comming out today or 2morrow depends on what new ideas and new thing come at me. Ill provide an list on my thread of the work ive completed and WIP.

But Ill post it here too. v4.0

-Overall look at all units. Each unit had a tweak along the way
-I played each unit vs other types of unit to see any weakness. Or imbalance.
-Greek units improved dramaticaly and can withstand most of any type of units now.
-Pikemen improved dramaticaly as well, they can do some serious damage and their attack may seem very high but its balanced. With a cooldown process of them thrusting their pikes.
-All legionarys defense improved by +5 and tested it to see any IMBA. Its fine and they do take casualties just not so many like use to.
-Cavalry Improved. Their charge is stronger now and are very useful now.
-All missile units nerfed and hopefully we wont hear any more stories of them now. They still provide a useful tactics agianst overwhelming numbers. Overall the missile units are still their and still annoying just not GODS!
-Barbarians defense increase by +5 and attack as well plus charge. I was testing some battles agianst other armies and found they lacked some stuff. They keep taking heavy casualties which is good but just to much. So I figured this will help them a bit and provide you barbarian Generals some usefulness of these barbarians.
Im sure dvk will start breaking my balls because of it but maybe you should try it and see my point of view.... poor balls .
-All Rebels now have different stats than their counterparts. Their just the steriods type of them. So prepare for more challenging fights. I dont want to hear anymore of a guy play vh/vh and making look like e/e. Pisses me off i must say lol.

Thats all the work ive done so far. Theres more and I can wait to put it out. Yes dvk itll be compatiable with your latest work so no worries of sendin hate mails to me because of it. I got it taken care of. Ill make sure no ctds/bugs.

[dvk901]

Well, a couple insights from my own experiences.

First, I don't think 'missle units' in general are\were ALL that bad. I took them all down one notch and removed or changed to secondary bonus to no more than 1 for all archers. Javelin S\B 3-5, ya think?

Second, in order to 'even the score' a little between Romans and more powerful Barbarians, I had to raise their defense. Basically, I mimicked LT's settings in SPQR, though hastati not so powerful....they were boys and unskilled. Principe and Triarii very experienced and hardened veterans, so they should be good. I found VE Legions and all Legions in general, because of their numbers, to be weak against most competion. They are expensive, and should fight like they are. Not invincible, of course, but not such pansies.

Third, Greek units benefitted tremendously from secondary bonuses...just took you example with Barbarians. From the front, forget it, you cannot beat them...so flanking is the only way. This is good, historical, more challenge and fun. Greek player will have to protect from flanking or die.
Also made hoplites more powerful...they seemed whimpy...even I could beat them with my eyes closed.

Fourth, removed the outlandish stat health of elephant units because you can hardly kill the dang things....even with supposedly 'overpowered' missle units....so now numbers are 1,2/1,3/1,4.

I really wouldn't improve Barb defense as you say...this is going to unbalance again. I think instead lower numbers for greeks (50) like romans (40), with higher defense, and the highest possible numbers (60) for Barbs with high offense but lower defense. No more than 10-11. You get too high, you'll make battles last forever, and Barbs had poor defense and armour.

Also, don't worry about VH\VH play...it has been a known issue for a long time. If people play that, then it's their own problem.

[rory o'kane]

i've yet to run this, mainly because i havent the time, but also becuase i was worried as to whether it was save-game compatible.... still, Angel, let it be known that if my segmentata legionaires are still being eaten alive by hairy Gauls.... i will not be pleased!

[removeduser_426582376423734]

Won't be able to play it for a few weeks, exams. Sorry.

[dvk901]

i've yet to run this, mainly because i havent the time, but also becuase i was worried as to whether it was save-game compatible.... still, Angel, let it be known that if my segmentata legionaires are still being eaten alive by hairy Gauls.... i will not be pleased!

It should be save game compatible...I was making these changes to my own setup while running a campaign. I had no troubles....in fact, I haven't had a single CTD and I'm at 243BC. So this Mod is very stable if you install it right, and install it on a stable RTW. I've purposely been trying to beat the piss out of it, opening every scroll, dialogue, browser, general unit...anything to try and find a problem.

[Deus ret.]

The hotfix runs just fine. I tested it thoroughly yesterday, even played as the Romans again, and had no problems at all...i.e. with stability

I don't know what the situation was like before the changed because I've not played Rome again since my very first vanilla RTW campaign but the battles in Northern Italy are indeed tricky. Don't want to imagine this without dvk's improvements....when facing stack after stack of really dangerous troops the game at least doesn't become boring

The penalties to public order when upgrading a city are perceptible, although there never was any danger of public order dropping below 100%. Maybe some other bonuses (e.g. academy) to public order could be removed in order to increase the challenge? Just a thought. Overall, as I already stated, the building trees and bonuses seem to be much more sensible. Congrats! I'm definitely enjoying the fix.

Oh yes, I can attest it's 100% save-game compatible.

[cherryfunk]

The penalties to public order when upgrading a city are perceptible, although there never was any danger of public order dropping below 100%. Maybe some other bonuses (e.g. academy) to public order could be removed in order to increase the challenge? Just a thought.

I wonder the same thing -- though I only played a few years, it was easy to put all cities on very high taxes and still have public order above 100%. But maybe it gets tougher as the cities grow, so I'll keep playing my campaign.

[tone]

Interesting, I played for about half an hour last night before dropping into bed. I immediately noticed that one or two of my cities unless I kept at least 4 or 5 units in were hitting red for unrest. So certainly more care needed now.

[cherryfunk]

Got a CTD attacking a slave army in the Crimea:
failed to find texture '/textures/UNIT_WBB_ELITE_HOPLITE_GREEK.TGA'

[dvk901]

I see what you mean...Duh! As far as 'cumlative'...good idea, and by the way, this is working perfectly.

Got a CTD attacking a slave army in the Crimea:
failed to find texture '/textures/UNIT_WBB_ELITE_HOPLITE_GREEK.TGA'

I have no idea what would've caused that? It's an 'Elite Hoplite'. Neither the slaves or the Free people can recruit this unit. It isn't a merc, and the slaves don't have any way to even have that unit. What was in YOUR army, Cherry?

Also Squid, I must really thank you for this idea. I had talked to Cherry a while back about how to make it very difficult to take and hold anything in the steppes area, and this gave me the solution. I hadn't been able to come up with a way until this idea came up.

[Squid]

One suggestion for the negative happiness bonuses, they should be cummulative from city size to city size.

Currently the first level where they get a happiness penalty they get -2 if they don't have a farm. At the next level the penalty is -2 if they don't have a farm+1.

So in the governors villa you have:

happiness_bonus bonus -2 requires building_present_min_level core_building governors_villa and not building_present_min_level hinterland_farms farms

And at the governors palace you have:

happiness_bonus bonus -2 requires building_present_min_level core_building governors_palace and not building_present_min_level hinterland_farms farms+1

I think for the governors palace it should be:

happiness_bonus bonus -2 requires building_present_min_level core_building governors_palace and not building_present_min_level hinterland_farms farms
happiness_bonus bonus -2 requires building_present_min_level core_building governors_palace and not building_present_min_level hinterland_farms farms+1

This way they are penalized for whatever they should have built at lower levels but didn't build.

Also I'm pretty sure you can leave out the part of the condition that is about the core_building since you are putting it in the core_building tree so that condition is not needed.

i.e.

happiness_bonus bonus -2 requires building_present_min_level core_building governors_villa and not building_present_min_level hinterland_farms farms

[Deus ret.]

Good idea!

[cherryfunk]

What was in YOUR army, Cherry?

Uh... Bosporan hoplites, regular hoplites, falxmen, light cav., peltasts, steppes warriors (mercs), sarmatian cav. (mercs) and merc hoplites. I think that's it. Nothing unusual or exotic.