Extended Cultures Discussion

**GeoHitmanGR** · November 11, 2016, 04:34 PM

Originally Posted by romanius24

Still playing XC4. Still awesome.

I do have some things i would like to point out:

1. Baktria trigger seems to have placeholder text

2. I think Rome should start out with triarii available from the start at least in one place. I noticed in a bunch of my Roman campaigns that i never bother with them because it takes to long to get to them and i would rather focus on the economy. Maybe its the reform trigger happening too early.

3. The very short missile range might have a negative effect on the Ai. I can handle it just fine with some micro but the AI isnt doing well with them and they are lucky to get one volley out before the enemy triggers their skirmish mode retreat.

4. Growth should be a little lower and perhaps changed into 'Man Power' or 'Households' since the population numbers cant be historical anyway.

Thanks for the kind words. We are always glad to find out that people still enjoy xc4. Unfortunately, since xc4 is pretty much complete and we are already in development of xc5, there will be no further changes or features in the mod, apart from bugfixes (Though I will try to make as many things as I can from xc5 available for xc4 in the beta files section).

1. Do you use the latest version? IIRC Baktria is no longer an emergent faction in the latest versions and starts as a regular faction on the map from the beginning. I may be mistaken on that though, It's been a while since I played xc4

2. Actually it always bugged me too, but seems to be a vanilla RTW issue. Practically any unit trained in army barracks is pretty rare, as by the time you build the pro consul's palace and the army barracks, the population is close to the next upgrade. Tinkering with the population growth to push the reforms later, also does more harm than good, as a flat reduction can make small villages really hard to jumpstart and slow down early game, while a scaling reduction with the city upgrades, makes it far easier to manage squalor in late game. We could try to make Triarii available at city barracks, but I'm afraid they will be too OP for that early in the game

3. That is a major problem. I recall Zarax fixing it a while ago, by giving extra range on archers, but reducing their aim over gret distances, so the result is pretty much the same, but without AI glitching about it. If you are using the latest version, I think I may need to look into it.

4. Already reworking the entire growth system for xc5

**Suppanut** · November 13, 2016, 07:37 AM

Originally Posted by romanius24

Still playing XC4. Still awesome.

I do have some things i would like to point out:

1. Baktria trigger seems to have placeholder text

2. I think Rome should start out with triarii available from the start at least in one place. I noticed in a bunch of my Roman campaigns that i never bother with them because it takes to long to get to them and i would rather focus on the economy. Maybe its the reform trigger happening too early.

3. The very short missile range might have a negative effect on the Ai. I can handle it just fine with some micro but the AI isnt doing well with them and they are lucky to get one volley out before the enemy triggers their skirmish mode retreat.

4. Growth should be a little lower and perhaps changed into 'Man Power' or 'Households' since the population numbers cant be historical anyway.

Thank you for your kind words as well.

1. I will looking into Baktria trigger problem for XC4 but it would be on low priority due to we abandon emergence Baktria for pre-placing Baktria in XC5.

2.I think this problem is originally coming from growth problem as I will discuss in 4.

3. As far as I recalled, I think the same as GeoHitmanGR, Zarax fixed it in later version. But about its existence in XC4, I would wait for Zarax to reply on this, as I know so little about unit part.

4. You seem able to read my mind

, in current beta of XC5, we changed a lot of flavor texts including "Population" to "Households" as for the same reason as yours.

About growth, this is tricky issue. Currently growth rate of anything below minor city are fine, minor city growth rare is within area of acceptable. The problem is large city. Growth of growth rate is growing linearly at rock-bottom rate (but population growth exponentially due to how population is stacking up for calculation) and due to how system hardcoded is, we could could not make it lower without permanently disable possibility of large city to able to reach huge city. But I think there are several way to solve it but test would be needed. (We want beta tester when that time have come as now Zarax has family and I working for PhD so speed of work is so low for everyone.)

1) We could create bigger obstacle to growth as settlement level upgrade. Settlement's pop will growth as long as all growth factor could overcome its hindrance factor (normally would be squalor which 12 for large city and 16 for huge city). As building system not support negative value of bonus (it will not reduced below 0) and not support penalty bonus (no squalor bonus could be given through buildings). All that we could would be add more negative bonus on health and growth to some key buildings or add it directly at core building that would artificially stretch need to overcome 16 squalor take longer time to do so (more building to build and more time to spend against early phase of negative growth at that settlement level).

2) We could also make requirement for building royal palace more difficult by add more buildings into its requirement. This would forcing settlement eat their squalor much longer before requirement for royal palace is fulfilled.

3) We could also make build time for royal palace ridiculously long but this would make decision to stop building it or change to other building to be too much penalty for both player and ai.

**romanius24** · December 05, 2016, 03:45 PM

My feedback is still coming from XC4(and with other mods in mind too) but i hope it can apply to XC5 as well.
1.
I like that units are very expensive in XC. It avoids stack spam and makes battle very decisive but i think the vanilla barracks chain isnt really needed.
There are some mods that just use a general recruitment building that gives access to all non elites and then the prices and stats are enough to balance out. I think this could work for XC very well and is more historically accurate.

Maybe instead of a linear chain it should be a choice between 3 types of buildings/edicts: auxilliary, basic factional troops and elite/special(elephants and/or really good troops).
Perhaps units could even be 'weakened' so that the real progression is in the blacksmith and other unit buff buildings. It is more logical see progression as 'better sword' rather than 'bigger building=better unit'.

For building fleets however, i think it makes sense that bigger ships require larger workshops/drydocks.

2.
I am noticing a large number of units that are not very different from each other so it just comes down to price in the end if the difference is very small.

3. A more specific thing:
I really hate the roman local auxilia. They are too expensive as an auxilliary unit and the regular cohort is just a better choice for a similar price.
My suggestion is one of 2 options:
Redesign them into full price regular cohorts with a local 'flavor'(similar to how other mods have Germanic,Eastern,etc legions):
Celtic legion: higher charge and offence stats
Iberian legion: better javelin damage
Hellenic legion: ligher/faster - more peltast like
Eastern legion: better shield stat and maybe testudo - used to dealing with annoying horse archers.

Option 2:
Keep them the same but reduce prices and stats so that they fit better somewhere.

4.
It would require some balancing but cavalry would be much better with numbers like these:
Heavy/General - 100
Light/Skirmish - 200

Small general units are another vanilla thing that i hate and dont really see the point of it.

Thanks for reading my random thoughts.

**Zarax** · December 06, 2016, 12:53 AM

1) We actually feel recruitment is still far too easy. In XC5 depending on how the region social structure is developed you will either be able to recruit classically or a mix of militia and a new class of proto-feudal units, in which you will get a small number of high level soldiers attached to a recruited general.

2) stats and models are limited so units with a similar function will have mostly cosmetic differences at the same recruitment level. Such a thing is inevitable.

3) This can be fleshed out better, take into account that auxilias are supposed to be less efficent than regular legions, we will see how to improve the recruitment system though.

4) That would have massive balance implications, if you could have large armies composed of your FM recruiting would be almost pointless.

**romanius24** · December 11, 2016, 05:02 PM

Arent the Urban cohorts a little hard to recruit? In comparison to the Marian Cohorts they require a lot more buildings to make them available.(stone walls>blacksmith>garrison)

Its a very useful unit just for economical reasons but it doesnt seem right that they would be so hard to get to.

Also, is it intentional for the unit to use the same skin as the regular cohort? I notice that XGM uses a different skin that matches to look of the unit's icon in XC.

**GeoHitmanGR** · December 14, 2016, 10:41 AM

Originally Posted by romanius24

Arent the Urban cohorts a little hard to recruit? In comparison to the Marian Cohorts they require a lot more buildings to make them available.(stone walls>blacksmith>garrison)

Its a very useful unit just for economical reasons but it doesnt seem right that they would be so hard to get to.

Also, is it intentional for the unit to use the same skin as the regular cohort? I notice that XGM uses a different skin that matches to look of the unit's icon in XC.

Indeed, Urban cohorts are one of the hardest units to recruit, due to their requirements, but that is both intentional and historical. Urban cohorts were more like a heavy duty police force and riot control (Much like a SWAT unit actually) and not really regular soldiers. They needed to be loyal to the emperor and experienced enough, so they weren't that easily available.

Their main purpose is not to be used at the battlefield, but provide a reliable and professional alternative for garrisoning cities with high unrest or close to the border. Think of them as elite militia, rather than decent normal units. I'd suggest building garrisons in economic powerhouse cities you want to keep under control and not on military cities with barracks.

Also, I too liked the skin of XGM urban cohorts, but IIRC historically, urban cohorts were pretty much the same as regular ones, just with better salary and privileges to ensure their loyalty.

In any case, if you still don't like the fact, I could help you change them to whatever suits you in your game. No need to let a bit of history ruin the all the fan

**romanius24** · December 14, 2016, 04:44 PM

They dont seem to be portrayed as elite in the game and work differently from vanilla. They look very much like a cheap levy cohort that doesnt have the experience of a frontier unit.

I think the unit that we have in the game resembles the historical Vigiles(which i also dont think should be available pre-reform) a lot more when it comes to stats/cost and the Praetorians look more like the historical Urban/Praetorian cohorts and were capital units.

To be honest i find the Praetorians useless but also out of time frame. The mod doesnt really cover the imperial period and i think a better elite cohort would be the Evocati since they would be recruitable outside Italy.

My suggestion is:
Rename Urban cohorts to something else(replace Vigiles maybe) and keep them as a garrison/levy unit with easier recruitment.
Rename Praetorians to Evocati and have them be the harder to recruit soldiers but available everywhere.

**GeoHitmanGR** · December 16, 2016, 04:43 PM

Originally Posted by romanius24

They dont seem to be portrayed as elite in the game and work differently from vanilla. They look very much like a cheap levy cohort that doesnt have the experience of a frontier unit.

I think the unit that we have in the game resembles the historical Vigiles(which i also dont think should be available pre-reform) a lot more when it comes to stats/cost and the Praetorians look more like the historical Urban/Praetorian cohorts and were capital units.

To be honest i find the Praetorians useless but also out of time frame. The mod doesnt really cover the imperial period and i think a better elite cohort would be the Evocati since they would be recruitable outside Italy.

My suggestion is:
Rename Urban cohorts to something else(replace Vigiles maybe) and keep them as a garrison/levy unit with easier recruitment.
Rename Praetorians to Evocati and have them be the harder to recruit soldiers but available everywhere.

XC4's development is pretty much over right now. No more changes or updates are scheduled, except for bugfixes.
We will take your suggestions though into consideration for the upcoming XC5. Thanks for the input.

EDIT: After a bit of research, Praetorians may not be as out of frame as you think. They may be officially formed later on, bet there were mentions of bodyguards as Praetoreans for quite some time.

**romanius24** · December 16, 2016, 04:59 PM

My suggestions are of course meant for XC5 too but i havent tested the current versions that much. I will do so once the next build is released.

I remember that EB changed the name of the general unit to "Consular Guard'. Maybe that could be done with Praetorians instead.
That way they can be represented by the general bodyguard unit or at least a retinue.

**Zarax** · January 28, 2017, 11:12 AM

A new test build is available: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AgkcZ2C1_-2SgdV_kx_nV8YKUCBwcQ
It contains a test fix for the installer on Windows 10, please let me know if you can see all your exe files now

**Zarax** · January 29, 2017, 09:32 AM

A new test build is available: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AgkcZ2C1_-2SgdYAUPTz8c-65xQTXA
Mod folder changed to XC5

**Zarax** · February 04, 2017, 07:07 AM

A new test build is available: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AgkcZ2C1_-2SgdcASycmlmfbpuQs5Q
More installer fixes, hopefully it should see most installs properly now.

**Foxcon** · February 05, 2017, 05:49 AM

The last version I tested was "test02082016". So what's new in this?

**Suppanut** · February 05, 2017, 08:28 AM

02082016 is date of compilation (ddmmyyyy) Aug 2nd 2016, so this one is newer as now it is 04022017 which had been compiled in Feb 4th 2017.

**Foxcon** · October 14, 2017, 11:04 AM

i really like the samnite sacred legion/pedites but the unit card looked a bit ugly so i made one myself

sacred_legion.7z

**Suppanut** · October 15, 2017, 10:57 PM

Thank you, Foxcon.

**Tim Dumcan** · November 21, 2018, 06:25 AM

A belated huge thank you to all the developers of this mod. The only mod that i have been playing for years now because its the best mod out there for character depth.