Thanks for the answers
@LusitanianWolf: I didnīt play Sarmatians in EB2, thanks for pointing at this unit. Maybe I should try other factions I normally play.
Thanks for the answers
@LusitanianWolf: I didnīt play Sarmatians in EB2, thanks for pointing at this unit. Maybe I should try other factions I normally play.
We've had a revelation that's set us back a little. Something Kull discovered that has a major impact on gameplay: the Rebels have not been recruiting in any iteration of EBII. Turns out the "slave" faction doesn't actually work when used in the EDB, the only way the Rebels can recruit is using "all". We checked vanilla and it uses neither, so that looks like an omission or oversight on CA's part. Upshot is a significant element of the play balance and challenge has been missing all this time, so we're going to have to do a lot more playtesting of this new reality before we're anywhere near a release. Needless to say, 2.35 is going to be a very different experience from what has gone before on many levels. - The Game Mechanics team
LOTR mod for Shogun 2 Total War (Campaign and Battles!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIywmAgUxQU
Imagines even more Eleutheroi hordes roaming the map*
This is either going to be great, or truly terrifying.
Btw, will the Thureophoroi units (both sword and spear) be redone like the Hoplites?
If slave faction recruiting is broken... how do you plan on getting it to work? Only thing i can think of is giving scripted spawns to settlements as long as they are rebel...
If it is genuinely unsalvageable, we may resort to that in the absence of anything smarter. They'd be simulated recruitment directly into the settlement, rather than spawned stacks roaming the province. Not a fun piece of coding, given it will need 200 loops (ie one for each settlement) potentially with a sub-loop or two for the different periods of time, meaning a lot of code.
It does make their Free Cities building entirely redundant, though, all those lines of recruitment and not a one of them does anything. It also can't address a thorny issue of no Rebel navies, since you can't script fleets belonging to the slave faction without causing a CTD.
LOTR mod for Shogun 2 Total War (Campaign and Battles!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIywmAgUxQU
It would significantly, yes AFAIK.It doesn't make the turn procession slower?
IIRC I've read somewhere z3n talking about the possibility of using a playable faction slot to improve the behaviour of the rebel faction... While it would be sad to lose the future chance of having one more playable faction, in terms of gameplay might be a worthy trade off.
What do you mean by the Rebels do not recruit?
I've had impression that they do recruit, tbh. Never paid any special attention to it, though. Could be that their armies increased by major brigand spawns and desertions.
I cant talk about any other's experience, but the "Rebels" in my campaigns did recruit, in this version and in the previous 2.2(...) ones. What I remember is that they only started recruiting when the number of regions belonging to them dropped significantly. When I played with Carthage and left Syracuse alone, they would easily recruit 2-3 units a year, maybe past turn 100. The same when I played with Hayasdan, I had made "Media" rebel with the use of spys, and then, after some years they had a full stack at the city, and again 2-3 units popping every other year and gathering up in my border.
Maybe its a question of money?
I don't understand the difference but I know they have not said the rebels don't recruit. They did through the "all" mecanism. The team wants instead that the rebels recruit through the EDB. I think the "all" is a generic recruitment system where you can't change a lot of things.
LOTR mod for Shogun 2 Total War (Campaign and Battles!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIywmAgUxQU
We've run tests on a bare mod, using slave and all in the EDB. In neither instance, even with lots of money, did the Rebels actually hire any units in their settlements. In 2.3 the Rebels are able to hire mercenaries, which they often do on their first turn (I've since excluded them from being able to do so). They obviously get any factional armies that revolt, plus bandits. And the random spawns used in various scripts. They may even retrain, though I'm doubtful about that too.
But all the evidence so far suggests they can't, were never able to, and indeed aren't intended to anyway. The Rebel CAI is a stunted version of the regular one used by playable factions. Trying to spawn navies for them causes a CTD. I'd chalk this up as another instance of the way CA have designed them as less than a full faction.
So will you guys try to implement all that coding for the rebels? It sounds like a lot of work and IMHO it doesn't seem it's really worth it. And more so considering that will slower your efforts on the new version. I might be utterly wrong though, so I'd like to know what do you think it's the best course of action, Quintus.
We may end up saying "sod it" for 2.35 and trying to work out a longer-term solution, but for the minute we're testing to make absolutely certain that is what's going on.
Since the EBII team is discussing the problems with the rebel factions I want to add this:
Using a faction slot for the rebels changes a lot the game, adding more challenge and difficult. I think the mod that better used this was Rome Total Realism VII.
They created two factions for the rebels, from their forum:
Mini faction
A mini faction is a localized settlement or group of settlements based upon the AOR of the region. Only important independant cities and minor factions will be part of the mini faction slot, they will work together with the cities they are allied to, defensively and offensively, as well as recieving certain diplomatic abilities. All of them will be condensed in one faction slot. Some examples: Britain, Maurya, Nabatea, Bosphoran kingdom, all the Secondary factions that arent in the game (read below to understand what secondary faction is). We dont have a finalised list yet, so suggestions are welcome.
Counter faction (or Secondary faction)
This is THE main feature of 7.0 (after the map, the new scripts and BI). I'd think most people here havent heard of the "unlimited faction" concept. It's rather simple. You have 19 base factions (18 in our case), and batch files, that change the txt files, and turn the empty slot in whatever faction we please. Due to our campaign system in 7.0 (which is explained below), we will change this slot to a faction that had a significant impact in the base faction.
Having played the campaign, I can say that they would present a good challenge, recruiting troops, doing some more diplomacy and attacking my cities. On the long term, they didn't stand a chance against the other factions (to much territory to cover) but they were a lot better then simple rebels. And since the EBII CAI is a lot more passive then RTW CAI, they would have a lot more chances to survive.
I am pretty sure that i saw rebels recruiting on their settlements in 2.3, as turns passed the stack inside the rebel settlement kept increasing until it was full and new units spawned near it, just like when player recruit units.
But perhaps it was them recruiting mercenaries from inside the settlement? is that even possible? (because the player can't).
I think this should be tested thoroughly to make sure what is going on and under what circumstances the rebels are recruiting or not.
I decided to test this instead of just assuming from memory, because i was quite certain about it. Here are the results.
Sinope from turn 1 to 30
Turn 1 - initial garrison
https://prnt.sc/lao861
Turn 2 - peltastai logades
http://prntscr.com/lao8jd
Turn 6 - hoplitai
http://prntscr.com/lao8wp
Turn 10 - xystophoroi
http://prntscr.com/lao99m
Turn 14 - hippakontistai
http://prntscr.com/lao9hi
Turn 18 - hoplitai
http://prntscr.com/lao9su
Turn 22 - hemithorakitai
http://prntscr.com/laoa55
Turn 28 - hemithorakitai (probably in turn 26 but i missed it)
http://prntscr.com/laoacf
Turn 30 - peltastai logades
http://prntscr.com/laoaww
Turn 30 - Government Overview
http://prntscr.com/laob5v
What i noticed is the following.
- The rebels from Sinope are recruiting from the settlement, not from mercenaries. I made sure to recruit all mercs myself leaving none available, plus the type of units recruited show that mercernaries were not taken.
- The rebels are recruiting from the polis building, and not from the eleutheroi government. Again this is shown by the unit type of the units recruited.
- The rebels were "encouraged" to recruit by parking a stack in their territory, however i have seen this behaviour regardless of using this trick. I just wanted to show clearly that the rebel AI does in fact recruit, contrary to what has been stated here.
My conclusion is that the rebel AI is only capable of recruiting from the polis building and not the government, the only difference between those i can think of, is that the polis building is of hinterland type (indestructible), while the government is not. Therefore a possible solution i suggest is to put all the rebel recruitment into the province "building" (where the description of the region goes), as that is a hinterland type building, and see if the rebel AI is capable of recruiting from there.
Firstly, this is absolutely brilliant feedback, exactly the sort we need when these kinds of questions arise.
The Rebels recruiting from the polis is curious indeed (and you're right, given the units that are appearing, some of which are not available from the govslave, that must be what is happening), because they're the wrong culture. Rebels are cul_6, only cul_1/cul_3 can recruit from the polis. I'm assuming if you right-click on the polis, the building card shows no recruitment for the Rebels there?
So I can think there are two possible conclusions from this: either the Rebels can only recruit from hinterland buildings, as you suggest; or the culture code allows them to do so regardless of whether or not it is the same as the Rebels one. The Rebels are different from regular factions in all sorts of ways already, giving them an exception to the usual rules wouldn't be outlandish.
The other observation I have is that money might indeed be a problem. The finance script sorts out Rebel debt the same as everyone else, and even doesn't have a "clawback" for surpluses. But we use king's purse to give them money every turn - and the amount is rather small since it's a flat fee (divided by 112 starting settlements), not a per-settlement boost.