Campaign Testing

**dvk901** · January 06, 2009, 12:07 AM

Posted by Tone:

It'd be really helpful if people could do a sort of "post your empire" style update every few years in their campaigns so we can see what's happening. What we need to begin to know is this:

1) What units are you able to recruit where as you expand?
2) What armies are you facing?
3) What's the level of challenge like for the faction you're testing

So a few screenshots of your empire, enemy army composition of battles you fight, and so on. This is really essential.

*****************************************************************
DVK:

Yes....I am really interested in seeing Empires. Once I get Rev12 done, there should far fewer CTD's (if any), and it's very helpful for me to see faction progressions. I can often tell just from looking at a person's Empire if a faction is having trouble...and make small adjustments to give them a shot in the arm.

Also, it is VERY useful, and will continue to be useful, to know what the composition of armies you face is. For example, if someone says (and they have) that Rome is attacking them with an army of Velites, I know they have a recruitment problem. They are either running out of money, or the right units aren't available where they should be. The AI WILL recruit balanced armies if it can, so armies of really crappy troops is an issue...or armies of all one kind of crappy units.

I also need to know if cities\towns\etc are maintaining a decent level of population. Are you capturing cities with very few people in them (the AI is stripping them, in otherwords)?
This is also a 'balance issue' in a 0-turn situation.

Later campaign issues....tons of stacks of high end armies. Stacks that are 'stuck'...observe the overall map occasionally and check out armies that never move or tend to be grouping in one place and never moving. This CAN be AI stupidity....but it can also be a map problem where the AI sends an army to do a task, but it can't because it gets 'stuck' in a place where it can't move on, or 'see' it's way out of the trap. The AI will tend to repeatedly send troops into the same area only to get stuck themselves.

Are money issues too easy...too hard....just right. Do NOT ever use cheats. This defeats the purpose of testing.

How does the new barracks system work for you? There will be a lot of differences from the 'standard' RTW barracks. ALL units are in one 'building complex', so to speak. Is it confusing? As you upgrade the barracks buildings...some units will disappear. Mainly, lower level units as you develope more 'military' oriented cities. Better units become available, but the levy and dispensible unit will disappear. You'll still have them in other places...so you'll want to consider NOT upgrading every single barracks. How does it 'feel' to experience and play with this situation? Can you figure it out? Does it need a lot of explaining?

Roman recruitment is very different...and very complicated in some ways. Legion recruitment is vastly different from RS1.5. Legions will be available in many more regions...but the same Legion. It'll make retraining easier....but house rules still apply. One Legion of any particular name supported by Auxilia and Auxilia Cavalry. Anyway, report any issues, oddities, things you don't understand.....

**Brusilov** · January 06, 2009, 01:53 AM

I should be able to post a suitable set of screens for my Pergamum campaign as I've been taking reguar saves. I didn't go into the depth that you want (looking at which units became recruitable at various stages though).

I do have a number of saves immediately prior to a lot of the battles so I should be able to show what units were arrayed.

The archery buildings don't list any extra units that can be recruited and a check for the first level of the units did not sow that any extra units can be recruited. I presume at higher levels the buildings will prove some advantage?

I've been fighting the Independant Greeks from the start and quite soon into the campaign I was at war with the Ptolemaics and Seleucids (they blockaded a port when there was no common border). I eventually was able to get a ceasefire with the Seleucids and then the Ptolemaics.

At that stage I was attacked my Armenia and Macedon came looking at Nicomedia but the field army I moved into the area put them off for a while. Eventually, they attacked me and I am also at war with the Ptolemaics.

The armies that I have been facing have been well balanced so much so that if I didn't know any better I would suspect that they are original starting armies!

I am playing with the RTW BI exe at H/H difficulty.

I did start a Macedon campaign (before my Pergamum campaign using revision 10) and took the Roman settlement on the Greek mainland (we start the game at war so I figure that's fair). The first few armies that the Romans landed were well balanced. The third army was simply Velites.

**Ketchup** · January 06, 2009, 12:49 PM

Here's the most recent screen of my fairly advanced Carthage Campaign:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Here are the screens I can find from the other thread, along with the reports from there.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

More stuff:

As I posted in the 'Carthage' thread, the AOR seems fine for Carthage in the areas I am in (it was also fine in Northern Italy when I was there).

Around 590 AUC the Arverni had 5-6 stacks around Massalia but they weren't especially high end - rather balanced actually and anyway the Arverni seem to be in decline now.

The new Barracks Complexes are great - I like recruiting my forces from one building. The complexity level of it is absolutely fine. I understood it from my first glance.

Regarding the ranges, I uderstand that they are being used for something else not yet in?

I thought the economy was not done yet? Anyway for Carthage I had tons of money from pretty much the start. It really started to come rolling in when I captured Iberia and Sicily. Bear in mind that I have a huge navy (approximately 10 full stacks of the best ship-the decere) and I have a network of about 30 spies in an attempt to keep money down. Last turn I ended, I got about 50K and I had just been on a construction jaunt around my empire (filling the cq's in most cities).

Cheers

P.S This campaign was conducted using Revision 10

**Athkara** · January 07, 2009, 12:42 AM

555 AUC in my Armenia campaign:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

I'm playing with some ideas for different faction colors...

Overall the game seems pretty well balanced, though the Seleucids seem to be collapsing rather quickly. In the early years the Free Greeks were very agressive, though not so much lately - although they're about to wipe out Sparta. The Parthians started expanding almost from the first turn, and have never had a city retaken by the Seleucids. Initially they were expanding rather slowly, having to fight off numerous Seleucid counter attacks; but after they took Ragae, the Seleucids more or less pulled all of their armies back to Mesopotamia and then over to Syria where they were being destroyed by the Ptolemys.

The Parthians just reently took Ecbatana and now have 5 full stacks just sitting around there; thy're funnling all of their troops to the city and completely ignoring the Seleucid cities in Persis. As a result I've abandoned the Seleucids and allied with Parthia

. And just to be on the safe side, I've taken Karkathiokerta and Pinaca from the Seleucids. However, now my economy has gone from a surplus of about 80,000 to just about 30,000 as I move out of my home territory.

Sofar the only full stack I've fought was a Seleucid army; it was quite well balanced (except for a lack of cavalry), or would have been if half the units hadn't been nearly dead.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

In the west the Romans have been going to war with Carthage and Macedon and the declaring a cease fire the next turn for about the last 10 years

.

Pontos has been trying to do naval invasions of the Scythians for some time now.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Meanwhile, the Ptolemys have suddenly drawn their enormous army back from Antiocheia and appear to be marching to Kyrene, to attack the city west of it I guess...

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

**Brusilov** · January 07, 2009, 01:47 AM

Attalid / Pergamum campaign (H/H - RTW BI exe)

Summer 536

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Winter 543

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Winter 556

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Winter 570

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Winter 574

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Also, I don't know if anyone has noticed this ship;

Edited: it's not a ship (doh) - I have booked my eye test.....

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

It did vanish after a while.....

**tone** · January 07, 2009, 08:57 AM

Great updates guys. Really good to start seeing some of the game progression.

**Brusilov** · January 08, 2009, 02:11 AM

Some 'batte' set ups. I will only list the units that are shown as 'peasants' rather than all the units, I will also show the units not shown on the first page.

I am only showing field battles and not sieges.

Winter 560 vs Ptolemaics

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Winter 566 vs Armenia

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Summer 572 vs Armenia

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Summer 574 vs Armenia

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Summer 574 - Macedon

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Summer 575 - Ptolemaic

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Winter 575 - Armenia

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Armenia was picking up a number of mercenaries - but I was slowly taking back the settlements and destroying a few field armies.

**tone** · January 08, 2009, 02:30 AM

OK I can see from this that the AI is recruiting a lot of the "merc"/AOR units:

Alan horse archers
Massagetae HA
Kappadokes infantry
Thraikan pezoi
Thriakan chosen hippeis
Median spearmen

and so on....we probably need to do what cherryfunk was suggesting and reduce the number of units in the "pools" , unless these are being recruited through the normal barracks system. Only DVK can answer this I think, but there does seem to be rather too much reliance on "merc" AOR units which will obviously dlute the factional differences too a bit too much.

**cherryfunk** · January 08, 2009, 05:35 AM

It sucks being right all the time...

**tone** · January 08, 2009, 05:50 AM

I dispute that Master Cherry. You're right only some of the time.

That statement you just made for example....it's just wrong.

**Brusilov** · January 08, 2009, 06:13 AM

I think I was killing off quite a few Armenian stacks (and also bribing some of the smaller ones) - I don't know if that was causing them to have less of thier own units compared to mercenaries.

I was recruiting the Greek Slingers to comabt the numerous missile units that the Armenians were fielding.

**dvk901** · January 08, 2009, 08:29 AM

I'm much the opposite, Cherry. Every once in a while I think I was wrong.......only to find I was mistaken.

:

But seriously.....not a lot of 'mercs' are recruitable in a city. There was just no room for them in city cues. So they were all in 'descr_mercenaries.txt' and available as mercs. I have since gone thru the file and created numerous individual 'pools' for various regions. Where a region had a 'specific' AOR merc unit, I basically removed the more 'generic' ones and make only the specific one available. I had not set any costs or given any attention to the number that would be available either....so I did some work on that as well. In every case as it stands now...you can only recruit one unit of any available in the region, and two max. Some of them were set at 2 and 4 max, or even 6......and the costs are now a LOT higher than they were. This should limit the reliance on them.

However, I am glad that the AI is USING them......that means we're going to see them. A good thing. I don't want to nuke that.

Another thing to bear in mind is the individual barracks systems......they are causing some 'issues' of their own which I'm trying to correct. The first step was to make them independent of the level of city after the city level. The problem here was that as it stands, the population growth is relatively low in RS2 as compared to RS1.5. So cities aren't growing as fast because, a) population growth is lower, and b) the existing population is being recruited for units. This means that various towns, large towns, cities are 'stuck' at a certain barracks level and can't build the next one. So if the AI sees that there are better mercs available than what it can get in it's cities....yeah, do the math.

I also removed ALL the conditionals for other buildings from the barracks trees.

This will all take some on-going tweaking and adjusting.....and Beta testers need to be quick to report issues like this. If it's a problem for the player, it's most likely a bigger one for the AI.

**tone** · January 08, 2009, 09:04 AM

So keep up the reporting guys!

**Cyrus the Virus** · January 09, 2009, 07:44 AM

Sorry I'm a little unfamiliar of getting only the minimap in an easy way.
Guess it's cut it out and paste it, zoom or something..

So until I got it, bear with me.

Just a few things I noticed.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

541 AUC

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546

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550 (With a look at the Roman Leadership system on enemy)

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551 (Romans have been using ships a lot, to reinforce their province in Iberia. And I'm only playing RTW, no BI.)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Will try to improve on my reports, to be as Brusilov

**Brusilov** · January 09, 2009, 08:26 PM

Originally Posted by Cyrus the Virus

Will try to improve on my reports, to be as Brusilov

Aspire to be better!

There is a lot of detail that I didn't take notice of - when and with whom you go to war etc.

The following is some of the details recorded for some 'financial testing' for RTR beta (faction names removed).....

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Edited:
One thing that can be done to test building trees is to force the completion of various building queues with the process_cq cheat.

So, to compete the buildings for Rome you would enter "process_cq Rome"

When using the process_cq "city name" cheat, you must use "_" for any spaces between the city's name. For example: process_cq Vicus_Gothi

The cheat to complete the recruitment queue is "process_rq Rome".

Obviously, some buildings cannot be completed until the next highest government building is completed. To add populations use the "add_population Rome 4000" cheat (the maximum is 4000).

The following are some links to cheat codes for RTW;

http://rtw.heavengames.com/rtw/info/cheats/index.shtml

http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/r...war/hints.html

Remember, these cheats should only be used to test out the building trees - it simply lets you build them quicker. They should not be used for a 'normal' campaign as the use of the cheats can skew the results and throw the game out of balance.

I would presume that the cheats could be used to process other factions queues. I know the "add_money factionname -20000" version of the add money cheat can be used....

**kekesvar.bingos** · January 10, 2009, 08:25 AM

did anyone at all experienced a campaign where seleucid wouldnt crumble and actually became strong power in the east? I think they are quit underpowered as they are now...

**Brusilov** · January 10, 2009, 10:23 AM

Originally Posted by kekesvar.bingos

did anyone at all experienced a campaign where seleucid wouldnt crumble and actually became strong power in the east? I think they are quit underpowered as they are now...

So far - no.

I think much the same happens in RS1.5 - they have a large empire to hold onto.

Even as a player faction they are hard to play - I am sure it's a matter of deciding what to hold onto and what to let go. Consolidate and then take back lost settlements. I am sure that strategy is beyond the AI though.

**Ketchup** · January 10, 2009, 11:17 AM

Right, here's the report for my most recent Makedon campaign (using Rev 11 of course). I'm going to be uploading a screen every 10 years so stay tuned.

World Affairs in 543 AUC

Well not much has happened so far. I kicked the Romans out of Illyricum with relative ease. Although, to the AIs credit, the small garrison was assisted by seaborne reinforcements (presumably from Tarentum or Cannae), but these only amounted to an extra half-stack and combined with the 3 units that start as the garrison they didn't pose much of a threat and were destroyed. Since then Rome have sued for peace and I granted their request. I took Byzantion from the free peoples although there was a larger force there than I first thought. Rome are comfortably beating Hannibal; they have the second settlments besieged and Hannibal is presumably dead. That's anout it.

World Affairs in 553 AUC

This is a bit more interesting. carthage has been beaten in Italy and it doesn't seem to have been costly for the Romans as they are looking strong and have immediately pushed on to the North. The Free Greeks continued there (overly?)agressive ways and attacked me in Northern Macedonia (with an army from Phillipuopolis) and so I am now wreaking havoc in Northern Greece. It is only a matter of Time before Thebes and the greek province to the west of it (I've forgotten it's name

) are mine. At least they seem to be losing in their war against Pergamum in Asia Minor. My faithful ally Sparta is also steadily pushing the other greeks out of the peleponnesus, although they just totally failed in an attempt to invade Crete, losing a whole stack in the process. BTW it's probably worth noting that I am funding Sparta in their campaign with my left over money (perhaps 80k so far). My economy is now motoring. I have 5 full stacks in the field, plus moderately large garrisons) and am still raking in 30-40 k per turn. Perhaps it could be toned down a little, but it's much better-balanced than it was in my Carthage game last revision. Rome are allied with the Boii and the Arverni (struck me as odd) and recently signed a ceasefire with Carthage. Also, once again, it looks like the start of the end for the Seleucids. Parthia and the Ptolemaics are invading on opposite frontiers and have been successful thus far, although there is plenty of time for a fight-back!

Stay tuned for some enemy army composition (once I actually fight an army that isn't a starting army) reports and regular updates.

State of World Affairs 564 AUC

I defeated Sparta easily - it only took 2 armies to take all their territory except Sparta itself - and I then made them my portecterate. The Free Greeks persist in being annoying - they excpet a ceasefire and then proceed to break it 5 or so turns later, with annoying regularity. As I predicted, the Seleucids are being mauled with the Ptolemaics being the main offender but Parthia chipping in now and again. The Romans are at war with all of Gaul (Arverni, Boii, Belgae) but still seem to be doing well. Carthage is doing very well and is on the verge of knocking out the Gaellici. BTW, I gifted Sparta Byzantion. Is it just me or are the Armenia and Ptolemaic colours too close in this new colour scheme. Also, the Greeks and Sparta could be a little more different...

State of World Affairs 573 AUC

Right, things are starting to get interesting now! Once again, the Seluicds have been rolled up and Parthia have one of the last two settlements besieged. This has set up a titanic war in the Middle East in which Pontus, Pergamum, Ptolemaics, Parthia and Armenia are all participating. The first casualty of the campaign has occured - the Gallaeci being unable to withstand the combined pressure of Carthage and Arverni. Rome is still at war with all the Celtic factions and seems to be winning against all of them - of course it doesn't help when the Belgae and the Arverni decide to start fighting each other halfway through a joint war against Rome

I'm pretty comfortable at the moment and have a system of frontier forst all along my Northern borders (equates to about 7 full stacks) and yet I still make ~50K per turn... I'm allied with the Getae who are at war with the Greeks and Scythia. Overall the campaign is quite balanced and is very enjoyable. Now it's just a race to see how far I can go before the new revision arrives

Anyway, onto the boring stuff

Pergamum Army Compositions (Taken from Western Asia Minor and the Byzantion region)

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

NEW

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Ptolemaic Army Compositions (Taken from their foothold in Europe)

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Getae Army Compositions (Taken from my Northern border)

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NEW

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You can make your own judgements but the only worrying thing I can see is a lack of cavalry (especially heavy) in the Pergamum/Ptolemaic armies.

Cheers

**tone** · January 09, 2009, 08:16 AM

Great stuff. Let us know what units you're up against as well.

**Cyrus the Virus** · January 09, 2009, 06:31 PM

A few Carthaginian rosters. Peasent cards most often different Numidian soldiers.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

Heaps of bodies, but lost battle. Dang.
(Free greeks attacked me first! They will pay...And I wanted peace.)

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564. Sparta is first to go, but that was long overdue.
Pontus ought to be next to go.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

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