Extended Cultures Discussion

[romanius24]

Is it just me or are missiles very powerful? I can do an insane amount of damage to units and sometimes even rout them with just the missiles.

I think one solution would be to add an options for 2hp units in the installer like XGM has if this is the intended balance.

[Zarax]

Which missile unit against which units?

Missiles in XC are less powerful than XGM and have a shorter range so they work mostly against passive units.

[romanius24]

I havent tested them without the 2hp option that XGM has. If you play like that, their missiles are actually super weak compared to XC on first look.

What happens is that because most units use 2 hit points, the missiles dont actually get that many kills but instead just weaken the enemy soldiers to 1hp. This feels very historically accurate and you will notice a lot of missiles weakening soldiers (the equivalent of a pilum getting stuck in a shield) and they will be significantly weaker once they make contact with the enemy.



I really like that about the 2hp option in XGM. It makes missiles have more of an auxiliary role in battles(which i think its accurate for the period) and also increases battle length a bit.


Not sure how easy it would be to implement that for XC but if its not much trouble then consider this a point in favor for it.

[Zarax]

I tested both approaches in XGM and chose to develop a more realistic one.
Missile units in XC are powerful only against static targets but XC uses effective range instead of maximum one, meaning skirmishers are not mini catapults any more and have to be in the front while archers have to be right behind the melee.

The counter to missiles is a charge as it was historically, no missile unit has an effective range long enough to attack infantry with impunity, only HA can do that but that's to be expected.
The problem here is not missiles but unfortunately AI which needs a few tweaks on that side...
Only heavily armored units or testudo formation can be expected to sit down and soak missiles with near impunity...

[romanius24]

Yeah, this works much better in the hands of the player and if you are careful you can cause a lot of damage and not have the AI charge at you.
In XGM, you will eventually have to charge in yourself to finish off weakened units. This also makes melee battles a little larger since most units are near full strength.

I like XC's current battle balance but after playing a bit of XGM, i got interested in the longer battles.

[Zarax]

I might try increasing dispersion a bit, although not much as it carries friendly fire risk.

[romanius24]

I noticed that both in XC4 and latest build, the starting battle of Antiochus Soter vs Galatians takes place on really bad terrain.

Do you think the armies could be moved to a better tile nearby? The AI seems to have a hard time with that battlemap.

[Zarax]

Err, that's actually a custom tile made to represent the actual battlefield.
Antiochius chose a place in which he could hide the elephants until the last moment, giving a very nasty surprise against the superior galatian armies.

[romanius24]

It does look really cool thats for sure.

[Zarax]

Yeah, it could use some improvement but I'm afraid battlefield makers are pretty much extinct for RTW and my skills are pretty limited...

[Aethis]

I am having problems downloading the Extended Cultures mod... The link: http://www.wmwiki.com/hosted/cv/

But it will not seem to finish the download - getting to around 113mb and then says it is finished but when I load the installer it says "Installer integrity check has failed"

Can anyone help?

[Zarax]

Try cleaning your browser cache and restart the download, it should fix it.

[romanius24]

I noticed that there was a building called CTD prevention? What CTD does it prevent exactly?
Also isnt it possible to change its name to something more immersive? It stands out.

[Suppanut]

It is there as preventive protocol of settlement revolt CTD from recruitment hole. We try so hard to not have it but as we end up having it so we end up solving it with the same method as Forth Age:TW, create indestructable building which normally no value or bonus (which make it less likely to get damage which sometimes randomly happen even when building is indestructable) except condition that once no recruitment building and core building not active, it will open recruitment roster so rebel could be spawn, thus CTD from unable to spawn unit for rebellion could be avoided.

We still think about what should be theirs mask so they would not be eye sour for player. We had considered about use it for region/settlement descriptions but we have too few content writers to create description for them.

[Manitizer]

Sorry if this has been asked before, I tried looking through the forums but the search function doesn't help that much. I get a popup whenever I quit Extended Cultures on Barbarian Invasion: Script Error in xc/data/export_descr_unit.txt, at line 11245 column 18. Invalid ownership type 'scythia' found in unit 'horse archers scythian horde'. Horde unit assigned to a non-hording faction.

I don't get this popup using the vanilla version (I have Steam RTW Gold), but the installer said using Barbarian Invasion is preferred. I haven't seen any issues or CTD yet, but I am wondering if this will cause an issue later on, like if I do battle against a Scythian army. Should I just keep to using the vanilla version, or is there a fix for this?

[Zarax]

The issue is caused by a steam update that forces the game to start with RTW exe instead of BI one, there's a workaround but it has to be done on the player side as we still haven't figured out how to do it via installer.

[Manitizer]

The issue is caused by a steam update that forces the game to start with RTW exe instead of BI one, there's a workaround but it has to be done on the player side as we still haven't figured out how to do it via installer.

Ok, thank you. Appreciate the reply. Hope all is going well where you're at right now.

[romanius24]

Have you thought about turning boat units into expensive 'fleets' instead?

I noticed that a lot of mods started doing that so that the AI can no longer block a port with just one bireme.
Treating single units as a fleet would make more sense and the player shouldnt have the big advantage they currently have at managing multiple units.

You can still keep the different unit types but just increase the prices by a lot and instead have 'bireme/trireme fleet' and so on.

[Zarax]

We considered this but it's rather tricky to balance properly as with our tight economy AI often ends up not using ships at all, it's something we'll check again in the balancing phase.

[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.