Exrm impressions

[Elodman]

Ave Mr. Exrm Creators and Addicted Ones,


Having read the sticky description of your attractive mod,
would enquire about gameplay impressions that long play can cause.

i.e.
-Is your mod in a good, playable stage already without bugs?

-Is there a huge advantage of using BI engine?

-Is there a great difference to RTR mod?

-Reality targets historical behaviour of nations, and also minor things like unit costs (ie. higher logistics costs when far from homeland), or what would you mention?

-Gameplay and Strat/Tactical AI got also a good place beside Reality-aiming?

-Tactical AI uses historical formations, and it is fun, challenging to play?

-How much is the defense skill of a beginner hastati or principes, and how much bonus is granted by blacksmiths/ temples and experience gained?

-On Vh/Vh difficulty, one can feel the immediate collapse of his empire?


Sorry for making so many questions, but I have seen / tried major mods, and sg always was missing.

Thanx, Ave to you.

[Quinn Inuit]

Ave Elodman!

-Is your mod in a good, playable stage already without bugs?

I think so, yes. There are still a few bugs (check the info thread), but I believe that the ExRM now has fewer bugs than RTRPE 1.9, thanks in particular to Florin80 and Jamey (with lots of other people, too, but those two really stand out).

-Is there a huge advantage of using BI engine?

I believe so. I think the AI is at least 25% better.

-Is there a great difference to RTR mod?

Oh my goodness yes. There's so much changed I wouldn't know where to begin. Check the intro thread for the details, or at least as many as I remembered to log.

-Reality targets historical behaviour of nations, and also minor things like unit costs (ie. higher logistics costs when far from homeland), or what would you mention?

Yes, we've got the nations behaving in a reasonably historical manner (the new map in 3.4, which won't be out for several months at this rate, will help that even more), and the tweaks we've done to unit costs make the game more interesting, reduce stack spamming, and cause the AI to make genuinely well-balanced stacks. We can't do higher logistics costs far from home though, at least not without breaking the AI (it's not smart enough to figure that out and it'll bankrupt itself).

-Gameplay and Strat/Tactical AI got also a good place beside Reality-aiming?

I don't quite understnad the question, I'm afraid.

-Tactical AI uses historical formations, and it is fun, challenging to play?

Well, I don't think it'll ever be as good as MTW1, but we've done our best. We use Sinhuet's formations with AI tweaks by several people, including myself under Aradan's direction. It's currently the best I've ever played against.

-How much is the defense skill of a beginner hastati or principes, and how much bonus is granted by blacksmiths/ temples and experience gained?

Blacksmiths: 1 and 2 for each level, IIRC.

Temples: Some morale at the highest level, and a couple of other things. I don't have all of the bonuses memorized, but they're not substantial (besides the happiness bonus, of course). We wanted the temples to be useful and unique, but not massively game-changing.

Basic hastati and principes stats:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

type             roman hastati
dictionary       rtr_roman_hastati
category         infantry
class            light
voice_type       Light_1
soldier          roman_hastati, 40, 0, 0.8
officer          roman_early_centurion
officer          roman_early_standard
mount_effect     horse -2, camel -2,
attributes       sea_faring,hide_forest,can_sap,very_hardy
formation        1, 1, 2, 3, 5,square
stat_health      1, 5
stat_pri         11, 5, pilum, 38, 2, thrown, blade, piercing, spear, 25 , 1
stat_pri_attr    prec,thrown,thrown ap
stat_sec         10, 5, no, 0, 0, melee, simple, piercing, sword, 0 , 0.3
stat_sec_attr    no
stat_pri_armour  4, 13, 8, metal
stat_sec_armour  0, 1, flesh
stat_heat        2
stat_ground      0, 0, 0, 0
stat_mental      18, normal, trained
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay  0
stat_food        60, 300
stat_cost        1, 1140, 438, 104, 112, 450
ownership        romans_julii

type             roman princeps
dictionary       rtr_roman_principes
category         infantry
class            heavy
voice_type       Heavy_1
soldier          roman_principes, 40, 0, 0.9
officer          roman_early_centurion
officer          roman_early_standard
mount_effect     horse -2, camel -2,
attributes       sea_faring,hide_forest,can_sap,hardy
formation        1, 1, 2, 3, 5,square
stat_health      1, 5
stat_pri         11, 6, pilum, 38, 2, thrown, blade, piercing, spear, 20 , 1
stat_pri_attr    prec,thrown,thrown ap
stat_sec         11, 6, no, 0, 0, melee, simple, piercing, sword, 0 , 0.3
stat_sec_attr    no
stat_pri_armour  9, 15, 8, metal
stat_sec_armour  0, 1, flesh
stat_heat        4
stat_ground      0, 0, 0, 0
stat_mental      18, disciplined, highly_trained
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay  0
stat_food        60, 300
stat_cost        1, 1364, 520, 104, 112, 600
ownership        romans_julii

-On Vh/Vh difficulty, one can feel the immediate collapse of his empire?

Heck, I feel that on M/M sometimes. In my first game of RTR 6.0G, I played Armenia on M/M and kicked butt. I tried playing Armenia in ExRm 3.3.3 (earlier version, not that much has changed) and got pwned.

Sorry for making so many questions, but I have seen / tried major mods, and sg always was missing.

Thanx, Ave to you.

It's cool. You have a right to have enough info to make a good decision.

[Elodman]

Ave Quinn Inuit!

Yes, I have a right to ask for sg, and you had a right not to answer.

But as it wasn't done, thanx for this very detailed summary of your Mod.
Thanx very much for this plentiful pieces of info, although I didnt intend to make anyone so much effort on my enquiry.

As all your intro was so charming, I downloaded the mod, and there found again great heaps of info. This is a really professional package, in comparision to others. Once I get through the reading stuff, will enter the fray in ExRm very deeply.

On a first glance, it is appealing not to have wasted too much effort on campaign gfx (or have I erred?).

Military carreer path, that also seems unique.

Some mods focus too much on eyecandy, while giving so high stat values to units, that unaltered experience bonus worth nothing in this primarily military game.
In some of them, AOR unit creation became somehow global, after having been unlocked. Would be strange to recruit hoplites in Briton.

And really the popularity of mod forums wasnt too helpful in selection.

So I hope, the balance in EXRM will hit the mark, I pursue for long.

Thanx for creating Exrm and good-luck on continuing its improvement.

Ave.

[Quinn Inuit]

Ave Quinn Inuit!

Yes, I have a right to ask for sg, and you had a right not to answer.

But as it wasn't done, thanx for this very detailed summary of your Mod.
Thanx very much for this plentiful pieces of info, although I didnt intend to make anyone so much effort on my enquiry.

As all your intro was so charming, I downloaded the mod, and there found again great heaps of info. This is a really professional package, in comparision to others. Once I get through the reading stuff, will enter the fray in ExRm very deeply.

I'm glad you found the info helpful. The changelog files are very detailed, but there are lots of minor tweaks that didn't make it in there or that I just forgot about. We've modified RTR pretty heavily.

On a first glance, it is appealing not to have wasted too much effort on campaign gfx (or have I erred?).

Well, I think Candel changed a fair number of graphics before I took over, but graphics have not been my primary focus. (Bladerunner900's done some great work on that for us, much better than anything I could do.)

Military carreer path, that also seems unique.

I'm not sure if it's unique, but I think only a few other mods are currently using it.

Some mods focus too much on eyecandy, while giving so high stat values to units, that unaltered experience bonus worth nothing in this primarily military game.
In some of them, AOR unit creation became somehow global, after having been unlocked. Would be strange to recruit hoplites in Briton.

And really the popularity of mod forums wasnt too helpful in selection.

So I hope, the balance in EXRM will hit the mark, I pursue for long.

Thanx for creating Exrm and good-luck on continuing its improvement.

Ave.

Thank you. We'll keep trying to do our best to balance history with hypothetical.