Personal RS Mod, Question on the RS Team

[Gaius Livius]

Hi RS Mod Team
I played this awsome mod but I always missed the grumpy old men called senate and of course the to other roman factions. Unfortunately RTW is not like MTW2 where you can add more factions. So I modded your Mod. I hope you are not upset its just for my peronal gameplay since I am an old fashion "Roman" who liked kicking the brutii or scipii. I added the senate and roman factions back in gave them proper family names to represent romes illustrious families like the claudii, aurelii etc. and changed all other necessary files. I modded the roman factions so that they not expanding that much until later in the game to trigger then civil war. I have done this in previous mods and it works fine. I have done some testing and everything is working I have one question though, is there anything else that you changed for the gameplay because of the absence of the senate and conversion of the two roman factions, that I need to consider?
Thanks for this fantastic mod and I cant wait for RS2 and of course I will mod the grumpy old men back in aswell

[cherryfunk]

Well there's that whole legion AOR thing...

[Squid]

Not to mention balance and difficulty, as you've now left two very large gapping holes on the map void of factions.

In RS2 you won't be able to add the senate back in, as they are totally and completely removed, it's not just put them back in descr_stat.

[Jingles]

Gaping holes? Syracuse and Epirus don't take up that much space, nor are they too important to miss.

Gaius Livius, If you get this working fully, even without the senate, would you mind uploading it? I'd like to give it a try.

[Squid]

Gaping holes? Syracuse and Epirus don't take up that much space, nor are they too important to miss.

Gaius Livius, If you get this working fully, even without the senate, would you mind uploading it? I'd like to give it a try.

They are very important, they keep Rome bottled up for a while at the beginning of the game, which if it isn't there is a gaping hole. The mod is balanced around no one faction being able to expand easily, and instead your taking two "blocking" factions (though of course they can and do expand at times) and replacing them with two expanding faction, and end up with three factions who don't need to worry about guarding their backs. To me that is a gaping hole is balance.

[MarcusTullius]

Its the internal balance of the game, the way factions expand and interact with each other that will be changed

[Gaius Livius]

Thanks for the reply and advice. I still have to figure out what to do with those provinces left behind from syracus and epirus so more testing is required.

@ Jingle_Bombs
For uploading my version I need to ask permission from RS modding team.

[Ketchup]

No need to knock the guy, eh? He's doing some good work and I see no reason why the RS team won't let him release his work; they're generally nice guys! However, Gaius, I would make the gaps where Syracuse and Epirus were have a very strong rebel presence. Maybe spawn a full stack in each city and a couple of stacks in various regions? Just to slow down the three Romans.

[icydawgfish]

What about the Marian reforms? Are they triggered when all three Roman factions have built an Imperial Palace in one of the designated cities or when only one of them does?

[cherryfunk]

Squid, I think you're overstating the importance of Syracuse and Epirus -- remember those are two factions we cut from RS2.0 because they really aren't needed. The Free Peoples could take over their 'blocking' role pretty easily...

I don't have a problem with this being released as a mini-mod, though dvk is the ultimate arbiter of such matters. I think if you present him with a gladius or a scutum he will be most favorable to your petition

[MarcusTullius]

But Cherry, the free people buffer wont be present in this case. Rather, it will be 2 new factions hell bent on expanding.....

[Squid]

It's the balance of power in the region that will be missing. Instead of having 3 factions vying with each other for regions and power, you have three factions that are fully cooperating and not particularly hindering each other. The blocking yes it can be done with the free people; however, the free people are not offensive in nature as the two factions the free people would be replacing are. There's no way you can add that kind of power vacuum and not have the three Roman factions owning the world easily in each and every campaign, which is very vanilla like and not like RS is supposed to be, the only difference is there's no rampaging Egyptians or Britons to slow them down.

As for the factions being cut, it wasn't because they weren't needed, but rather because Epirus was long gone, and Syracuse is about to be conquered.

Either way, he's more than welcome to make a mod of RS for private use, as for releasing it . . . well as stated that's dvk's decision.

EDIT: This doesn't even take into account how you manage the individual legion recruitment, at best whichever faction you are will only have on average 1/3 of the legions available. In fact if I recall the recruitment map, the Scipii are going to be totally screwed since I think in natural expansion they only have a couple of the imperial legions, where as the brutii would have well over half, with the Julii holding the balance.

[cherryfunk]

Well sure, it significantly impacts the balance of power, but then it also adds a big Roman civil war. So it has good points and bad. Certainly worth trying if he really wants lots of Romans

But yeah, I have no idea how you'd get the legion AOR up and running, unless you simplified it somehow. That would take some work I think.

[Squid]

If you want the civil war, remove only one of the factions (and as much as I don't like it, I'd choose Syracuse) and add loyalty instead, it's far more realistic then a three family Rome which didn't ever exist, and was a complete fabrication in RTW.

[cherryfunk]

True, but some fans always liked the '3 families' setup. I'm not one of them -- I think it's awful and haven't played it since vanilla -- but hey, if some fans want it, let them eat cake! No harm done.

[dvk901]

In terms of balance, Squid has a valid point. One of the big flaws of the old RTW 'four Roman factions' setup was that you basically had four factions hard code allied with each other UNTIL some civil war occurred. Therefore, you have four factions with a unified purpose expanding in all directions. The result is a very lopsided campaign, IMHO.

Personally, I would prefer just the Senate in RS1.5...sort of like SPQR, and one Roman faction. It makes more sense to me. But in the end, RS is for fun...especially RS1.5. I have no problems with mini-mods as long as the creator takes responsibility for them.

[Jingles]

I want to try the 3 families setup, simply so I can play as the Getae and fight off a Roman invasion. Fighting the Macedonians is only interesting for so long...