The post marian project

[Zarax]

XGM has gone a long way now but there might be still a spot where we can do lots of improvement and that's faction reforms.
There is only one dynamic trigger for reforms in RTW and that's the marius one.
We have a limited control over when it triggers by basically changing pop growth rate in Italy.
It is basically an one shot trigger but there are some interesting things we can do.

The first one could be a religion/culture change for some factions, emulating their historical cultural evolution but also presenting the player with a civil war-like scenario for the factions involved.

Carthage:
eastern-western civilized change would reflect the degree of adaptation they had on both hellenic and roman culture during the punic wars.
It may also deserve a few roster changes.

Pontus:
eastern-western civilized reflect the fact that they already start as a mixed culture kingdom and later in history Pontus will be a totally hellenistic kingdom.
Roster changes should definitely happen on this one.

Parthia
barbarian - eastern civilized reflect the fact that they were still nomads at the game start but later they will become the eastern power by definition.
Their roster should be much like scythia at game start but later change to something like Armenia...

Spain:
barbarian - western civilized would reflect the continued influences of greeks and carthaginians on them.
They actually were quite different among areas, with the coastal tribes being urbanized to an high degree (Tarthessian civilization and more) and easily the equals of their eastern neighbours.

Thrace:
barbarian -western civilized would reflect the hellenization of the population.
This may be debatable because lysimacus' was one of a kind attempt but ideas are welcome.


Scythia:
barbarian - western civilized would be a similar discussion as thrace.
Elites were definitely getting hellenized by the game start and later they were even more under a mix bosphoran greek and pontic influence.

Roster changes:
Right now what we have can be basically summed up as "geez, here are the legionaries".

How about revising the roster of some factions to reflect their cultural changes/historical adaptations?

EB showed some examples with many factions going over an armoring or flexibility path for their forces.

Some examples:

- Carthage could evolve its civic forces into a successor-like military while the local ones could show more "noble" units.

- Parthia would start with a roster much like the scythian one but later it would switch to something closer to Armenia

- Thrace could start like now but later get some phalanx units, maybe iphicratean style

- GCS could evolve the thorakitai concept a bit and get their roster a step closer to the roman one

- Seleucids could loose a few greek units and get some more eastern ones reflecting their efforts to fend off Parthia

- The idea about ptolemies getting more local with their roster seems good, EB got some good examples in that area

- More ideas are welcome

[brandbll]

I like your ideas there. I'll try and give some more input later. But don't you think it'd be nice to somehow include Greece in some of those changes? Afterall, this is a Greek mod.

[Maraxus]

For a while I was thinking of making most Ptolemaic cleruch units pre marion only to reflect the reduction in western settlers as the game progresses. Plus that would severely weaken Egypt later in the game, preventing the infamous yellow death.

[Zarax]

For some reason only part of what I posted appeared, will complete it later...

[Suppanut]

I like idea to have change from reform other than Roman and copied of legionarries but I also have some others to suggest too.

I think cultural change by reform would cause mass social turmoil across domain(especially their heartland of factions) for sure which made all these weaker in short term and harder for them to counter neighbour factions those have no cultural change (especially if Romans is their neighbour) especially horse factions that they already has problem with their own infantry to guard city.

I don't think scythian should become western civilized since most of them still semi nomadic after age of reform and western civilized look down nomadic peoples eventhough they practice more on sedentry and agriculture(for western civilized, civilized people are people who lived in cities not people who lived in the fields anyway). To emulated trend of greek culture, get infantry unit that fight in hoplite style is quite enough. In my opinion, They should also get back some infantry unit like axeman and chosen archer which they have in vanilla's rooster back after reform to represent sedentry guy that not lived in city along with descipline greek style hoplite unit that represent some hellenization element of their city dweller. Maybe get very heavy sarmartian cavalry too since power of Sarmartian grow replaced of Scythian that on the declined historically

I agree with you that Parthia should grow more Persian like Armenia. Maybe they should get back some support infantries like hillman, archer and fictionally Immortal(replaced heavy spearman since I think its too cheap for horse faction like Parthia) after reform. No cheap main melee infantry since Parthia is horse faction but other support infantry still quite normal price as Armenia.

I think All eastern civilized factions should get level5 temples as western civilized factions already have after reform since they as devoted to religion as(and maybe more than) western civilized.

I think all sedentry Barbarians factions like Iberia, Thrace, Gaul and German should get huge city upgrade(due to growth of trade and contact with civilized factions) with new units for this level5 city which maybe more descipline than barbarians standard(due to their experince with roman army both worked for them or opposed them) or radically chaotic killing machine after reform. But this level5 city should have very few upgrade like barrack and maybe large open sewer and foundry(maybe for Gaul as for Iberia since they well known for their metalwork). for German units maybe can have influence from BI, EB and Invasio Barbarorum.

For Saba, I think after reform it should get more mounted unit of light cavalry, skimish cavalry and carmel which I think they paved way to social and military structure that give birth Islamic empire as mention to imply as in XGM's Sabaean's faction description.

[Kara Kolyo]

Agree with suppanut.
Maybe one option for seleucids and bactrians is to have the cataphracts post marian. this way we could represent the EB script to get this unit after fighting parthians

[Zarax]

Keep ideas coming, maybe DBH will agree on some...
BTW, expect a new release of the slow mod soon, I'm working on something to reduce the late game "filthy rich" effect....

[Suppanut]

Will you change trigger condition for Reform event to be less romanocentric?

How could EB can activated rooster change in seperated events for some faction?

If possible to activated reform in seperated events I suggest to activated seperated in 3 event.

1. Universal Hellenistic; for All Greek factions, Thrace, Scythia, and all factions that will recieved greek style upgrade unit. Activate once western civilized culture dominated more than 50% of the map. This event will add all new greeks related unit to all factions that supposed to recieved especially all successor of Alexander. Thrace will get huge city upgrade.

2. Successor of Archemenid; for Parthia, Armenia, Pontus , Saba and neighbour faction as Seleucid and Baktria. Activated by once number of provinces belong to all eastern civilized factions combined except Carthage is more than 50 provinces. Once activated, all eastern civilized will can upgrade temple to level5, all non-Carthage eastern civilized factions will get new units in their roosters, Seleucid and Baktria will get cataphrect style cavalrys.

3. Marius Reform; for Romans, Carthage, Iberia, Gaul, German and all legionaries copy unit. Activated in the similar way as now. once its activated will automaticly activated the former 2 events. Roman will get all new rooster, Carthage will get upgraded rooster, western barbarian will get huge city upgrade along with add new units to their roosters.

What do you think?

[Kara Kolyo]

Alas suppanut the marian reforms are hardcoded. you can only try to delay them by lowering the pop growth. EB did their magic with heavy scripting that is a big no no for XGM

[Suppanut]

Alas suppanut the marian reforms are hardcoded. you can only try to delay them by lowering the pop growth. EB did their magic with heavy scripting that is a big no no for XGM

Thank you for enlighten me.

[Kara Kolyo]

no problem maybe we could persuade DBH to make some small script as install option or just stick to the simple thing and play EB when feel the urge for complicated stuff

[Zarax]

I think most stuff could be done without scripting, we can make the best out of the marian trigger but the rest can be done with building trees...

[Suppanut]

I think most stuff could be done without scripting, we can make the best out of the marian trigger but the rest can be done with building trees...

Thanks. I think this is good since lighter script mean quicker load(I stop play EB for a time being since it took almost 10 times longer than XGM in ingame loading and some ingame interruption since my computer now don't have large amount of RAM). But look like this reform are base on roman survival which not good for Carthage, in vanilla and XGM now, who will lost almost all chance to victory if roman get reformed as now red plaque will almost unstopable. Iberia, Gaul and German will face hardtimes too since for this time being Marian reform done no good for them at all so their players goal should be eradicated rome before they get reformed.

[Zarax]

That's why I've always been pushing for more units for other factions, it's the best way to counter the legions...

[brandbll]

That's why I've always been pushing for more units for other factions, it's the best way to counter the legions...

You know, i've played quite a few campaigns as Greece, and this is really the first time i've ever had a problem with Rome. Usually if you just go about your business Iberia and Carthage will wear Rome down to nothing. Maybe it was just an anomoly and i lucked out though, because this time they came after me strong and early.

[Randal]

You know, i've played quite a few campaigns as Greece, and this is really the first time i've ever had a problem with Rome. Usually if you just go about your business Iberia and Carthage will wear Rome down to nothing. Maybe it was just an anomoly and i lucked out though, because this time they came after me strong and early.

Rome is always a problem for me except in my gcs campaign now. i used 2 spies both with the plague to destroy the romans population so they still havent hit marius and its 219bc and i have more than a few huge cities.

[Suppanut]

Or give some new units and buildings to others factions along with Romans by reform to prepare them for upcoming threat of hyper red plaque and made gap of Post-reformed romans' advantage not too far.

[Suppanut]

I never play non-roman factions up to time of reform before, Are there any event report about reform for non-roman factions?

If not I think they should have one. If each factions have seperate text report then we can easy characterized as if each factions have their own reform or social development to counter romans/ prepare for roman threat(such as barbarians' seer/oracle warn for upcoming threat or spy report and immitated reform model by roman for all legionaries owner etc.) or if it is only one global event so we should rewrite event description to non bias as tell something globally across known world.

[Suppanut]

Instead try to change state culture when reformed , I think give multi-cultural factions two barrack(for each culture that they melt together with all thing identical except culture) or give them ignore_culture barrack after reformed would be better

Such as Baktria and Pontus is on the faultline and melting pot between east civ and west civ, so after reformed we should give other type of barrack for other culture which they melt with, Western civilized barrack for Pontus and Eastern civilized barrack for Baktria , these barrack is almost identical to original factions' barrack except culture. We can also use ignored-culture barrack instead which reasonable for other flashpoint like Iberia. This will made multicultural factions done well in develop their empire or emulate their history.

Multicultural empires are have large problem to cope with different culture such as for Baktria is faultline of 2 cultures (Greek conqueror, indo-iranian local people) and 4 religions (Greek polytheism, Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism) that doesn't like and always envy each others. Baktria is end up encrouch to be part of eastern-indian culture so fighting for cultural space here quite intensive in cultural/religous space which should be emulate in game (hellenistic traits + colony VS. All eastern religion traits + local people)

[Paul d]

hey, are you guys gonna change the post marian legions? i am gettin sick of having to look at 200 A.D. imperial legions.


scythia, should not have culture reform, while they were hellenized to an extent, it isnt all that big, especially if you are putting scythia in where sarmatia is annyway.


same with iberia, while they were helenized, it wan't a universal thing. only coastal tribes were mainly.





plus, if the factions culture changes midgame, wont that pretty much F them up real good? won't there be loads and loads of riots and civil revolts?