Suggestions and requests

[CaesarVincens]

If you have any suggestions or requests for Extended Cultures, post them here.

[Silver Legionary]

Caesar, since you have your own mini-mod now, I believe that you
should add some stuff, if at all possible.
Having more AOR archer units, but not including areas that already have decent archers(Crete, Syria), would be a good thing, IMO.
Also, I think the Greek factions could use a decent non-crossbow archer unit, it could be similar to the now-gone Athenian Marine archers, with the well armoured stat, longer range, and high morale/good melee and missle attacks.
Furthermore, you were planning on using the 4th level auxiliary barracks for customary mercs, right? Because I think that could be a. Really. Cool. Feature.

[CaesarVincens]

I'm working toward a more AoR roster overall.

If you can find evidence of a Greek unit such as you describe I would be more than happy to include it, but I think that such a unit is already represented in Cretan Archers and other missile units easily available to Greek faction players.

I do want to create a system of customary mercenaries, but right now I'm rethinking the process slightly because of some flaws.

[Zarax]

I'm interested in your ideas about that, the customary mercs system is something we really wanted to see in the post marian project.

[Silver Legionary]

Ah.
Yeah, I guess the Greeks are good enough already, even
without a factional elite archer unit.
For the customary mercs and AOR units, what are some ideas you have?
Because, I'm a bit curious as to what you have in mind for that.

[CaesarVincens]

Well, there is the beginning of a system (taken mostly from the PMP ideas) in Extended Cultures.

But the problem is that it will let you recruit certain types of units even if you don't control that unit's native province, and that's the flaw in the system.

[Zarax]

We could fix that with some unique buildings, basically allowing recruitment of a certain unit with a certain building faction-wide (similar to what is done for Carthage by its monument)

[DimeBagHo]

We could add a faction wide ability to the normal barracks building, limited by a hidden resource. Here's an example:

			faction_capability
			{
                recruit "merc cretan archers"  0  requires factions { greek, egyptian, } and hidden_resource crete
			}

If we add that to the level three Greek baracks and above, then I think the effect should be that a Greek faction, that holds Crete and builds a level 3 barracks there, will be able to recruit Cretans anywhere. The only problem is that Cretans will be recruitable even in settlements that have no barracks.

If you wanted to make them recruitable only in third level barracks then I think the only way to do that would be to use negative upgrades, as previously suggested for reforms.

[CaesarVincens]

I had thought about the faction capability, too. That is my first idea; the way I'd set it up it wouldn't be too much of a problem except that I have most customary mercenaries set to be recruitable only at sea provinces.

I might think about negative bonus reforms more.

[Zarax]

This might be helpful for Suppanut.
Instead of representing offices of various kinds the senate traits should represent support from upper classes.
Basically the senate becomes your factional aristocracy and the traits are how much they support your rule.

The missions will represent political lobbying and so on... what do you think?

[Dom9127]

Would the factional mercenaries only be for factions which historically used them extensively? i.e Carthage, Ptolmeys

[Athenogoras]

Instead of representing offices of various kinds the senate traits should represent support from upper classes.
Basically the senate becomes your factional aristocracy and the traits are how much they support your rule.

The missions will represent political lobbying and so on... what do you think?

Very interesting. Perhaps some suggestion of what the senate would like:
-Low taxes on land(their great estates)
-Enslavement(cheap labour for their esetates)
-No written laws(better to keep it oral for flexibility and use the chickens as vetopower)
-Bathouses, academys(leisure and educating lawyers and scribes to keep track on debt)
-Aquirement of new regions and titles
-Aristocracy in command of army

[Zarax]

I wish senate missions could be edited to that extent but I'm afraid they're hardcoded.
What is doable is to make traits and missions look like they represent support from nobles and lower classes in a similar way to what council of nobles does in M2TW...

[CaesarVincens]

Would the factional mercenaries only be for factions which historically used them extensively? i.e Carthage, Ptolmeys

Yes (and I like faction mercenaries better than customary, thanks). So factions that use mercenaries extensively, or even just one type of mercenary extensively, would get wider access to that type of mercenary.

To that end, some more research needs to be done at some point too.

But you can expect at least one factional mercenary for each of the major factions.

Zarax,
I like the idea, it would be a good way to make the XC senate more unique.

[Suppanut]

I had thought about the faction capability, too. That is my first idea; the way I'd set it up it wouldn't be too much of a problem except that I have most customary mercenaries set to be recruitable only at sea provinces.

I might think about negative bonus reforms more.

Nice idea. I agree with you too, Caesar.

[Suppanut]

In fact I have done some research about custom mercenaries when I give idea about it to PMP

Egypt: Thracian, Galatian(by give land to settle in empire in exchange for service of whole clans)
Macedon: Thracian
Seleucid: Thracian, Galatian(by give land to settle in empire in exchange for service of whole clans)
Rome: Balearic, Cretan(bring them as auxilia support their heavy infantry almost everywhere)
Carthage: Balearic, Numidian, Iberian
Bactria: Indian(likely to be), Scythian(steppe east)
Thrace: Greek, Scythian/Sarmatian
Pontus: Cappadocian, Galatian, other Anatolian, Scythian
Gauls: Germans(why it doesn't have merc axemen in germania??), britons(likely to be)
Spain: Celt(why it doesn't have merc swordmen in gauls??), or gaesatae(likely to be), balaeric as well as other minor iberian like cantabrian, austurian
Germans: Celts(west), Scythian(Gothic east)
Scythia: Thracian, Bosporan
Eastern faction: no data available yet, maybe Greek or median/persian.

[Zarax]

Easterners usually hired greek and scythians plus the odd indian elephant in their armies.

[RedFox]

Well, I don't know if anything like this is on your list of to-do's, or anything, just thought I'd request these things:

- Combat system similar to DTW: morale is 16 on all line infantry, so the units 'rout when they rout', not randomly. Give all units the 'very_hardy' attribute, to help the AI cope with fatigue. Increase defense skill drastically for both infantry and cavalry, making flanking attacks more effective for infantry too. Cavalry charging distance lowered to decrease the chance of ridiculous cavalry charge fail. Units balanced cost-to-performance wise!! There are many units that cost nothing and pretty much rip through everything, which is not good balancing.

- Slow mod: reduce the amount of AI bonuses drastically. Each AI faction gets a different bonus depending how well they fare in the campaign. Factions worse to wear get higher bonus, while overpowered factions get none. Settlement growth values reduced to avoid fast overgrowth of cities. Globally reduce law order, to make taxing penalties more severe. (so that you can't have all taxes on VH all the time - happens to me a lot in XGM and the populace is mighty happy about it too, even though I'm pretty much robbing them blind)

- Campaign balance: Make starting difficult and hard to blitz. Rebel settlements should be strong and full of troops, making conquering them more interesting (15 units is a lot more fun than 3 units..). Everything to get the AI to attack fellow neighbours, you can also remove the bad faction_relationships towards the slave faction, to entice more faction to faction warfare.

Well, it's pretty much a gameplay improvement request and it would be great if some of these were implemented..

[Zarax]

The slow mod side is something I'll personally take care of, right now there is way too much money for the AI (germans bribing my gaulish towns? no thanks)...

[Stilgar CG]

Well, I thought XC could be listed directly in the list of XGM sub-forums. It will be more visible. After all, this is a mod that aims at modifying many important aspects of the game.
Anyway, the main reason of this post is to suggest setting a separate XC download (closed) thread with all the info and installation instructions.