A few things I'm working on...

[dvk901]

Besides balance and hundreds of little details....

In the most recent update I separated the Ptolemaic Barracks from the Seleucid one.....I noticed an immediate difference in how the two behaved. Since they no longer share their barracks, they can't just immediately start recruiting units and beating up on one or the other. It has slowed them down in that respect. I've also adjusted a lot of the 'provisionary' bonuses I had added a long time ago to keep Seleucid's eastern regions happier. Truth is...historically they DID have a difficult time maintaining their eastern regions, and making them TOO stable just allows them to go on a conquering binge without being concerned with them. I think part of the 'Seleucid challenge', as people have said, is that it should be hard to keep the whole empire at the start. And the loss of those regions doesn't (and wouldn't) hurt them much anyway. They aren't very 'productive'.

I've adjusted the cost and the time to build AND the level at which all barracks are available for all factions.....and they are somewhat varied. Barbarian barracks are a bit cheaper and take less time to build. Nomadic barracks are also cheaper and take even less time. Parthia's barracks is now only three levels.....again, I noticed an improvement in their performance as soon as I made this change. ALL levels of barracks are now available at the 'city' level, so this should make the population issue a 'bit' less dramatic. (I hope...will still need tweaking I'm sure.)

There may be a bit of different 'happiness' level with the Romans....I haven't figured out exactly what I changed to do that....but they seem a little less 'happy' in Italy. Maybe not a bad thing.....but not so cool that I don't know why. I 'purged' a bunch of bonuses out of the 'core_buildings'...so I probably axed one by mistake.

There is a CTD occurring in the early 600's AUC.....and I have yet to figure out why it's happening, or whose responsible (faction). PLEASE, as your Campaigns approach the 600's, be watchful of the trun icons as they pass and try to see which faction is causing this. I 'think' it's happening during the Roman turn, but it happens so fast it's hard to tell.

I'm going to do some 'revamping' of the merc\AOR recruitment....as I've discussed with Tone, I'm a bit concerned about creating so many 'one region' aor's for so many units. I'm afraid people will ignore them or complain that they are useless if the areas to retrain them are so small and hard to find. To 'justify' a larger AOR, I'm working on a building that will be called: Mercenary and Regional Unit Recruitment. Here is the description for this building:

"Your diplomats and representatives have been busy making contacts with other tribes and peoples in this region and the surrounding regions. Many of these people are sympathetic to your cause, or do not mind your rule compared to their former masters. So they send warriors to fight with your armies and to bolster your forces in times of need.\n\nBut these are not the only allies your representatives have found. There are numerous mercenaries in this area as well....men who sell their services for a nominal cost, as long as they have a hand in the booty and wealth that your conquering armies will acquire. These can indeed be trustworthy men, for they live by a code of honor that says once they have agreed to fight for you, they will uphold their end of the bargain as long as you uphold yours. It would not be a good idea to betray that trust. They may well go and fight for you enemies instead.!!"

This will be a 'one for all' building, so the player and AI may find that it already exists in conquered region, but you get the general idea. It suggests that your nation's representatives have been looking for allies and mercenaries to supplement your own forces in a more 'far and wide' way.....even BEFORE you took a particular region. So if it's there...they sorta 'did their job'. If it isn't, building it is in a sense the 'act of doing what is suggested'.

IN this building....rather than in all the factional barracks, will be all the AOR and merc units that are available in any given region....but with a somewhat expanded area they can be recruited in based upon the rule of thumb that the unit can be recruited in it's 'region of origin' and every region surrounding that region. It suggests, more accurately I think, a bit of wandering on the part of mercs, and little more expanded reach for allies in your cause. Carthage which is a 'merc and AOR based' faction anyway....won't be able to build this building. So even if they capture a region with the building in it, it will be useless (especially since it would just double all their units!). The Romans will have it....but the units in it will be only the historical allies they had. So it will be more limited, perhaps....or not. I haven't decided yet.

What I'm NOT going to change in this building is, for instance, the City Hoplites....or units that are AOR units but are more specific to a faction (like Macedon's units) OR units that set up in a historical recruitment area (like Egypt recruiting certain Celtic units in the eatern parts of their territories). So I'm not going for a wholesale change of everything.....just certain AOR and merc units I think should be available ina a wider area...and Mulatto has offered to give some guidance as well. Certainly others may chime in as well. It will take a bit to set this up anyway.

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Another issue I want to work on is one that Tone has mentioned on several occasions.....Legion recruitment, and the mish-mash of Roman units the AI is recruiting that results in armies that look like a 'Roman Merc. Show'. There are things I just can't solve about this problem....like how the AI puts it's armies together or what it chooses to merge. But I do want to AT LEAST remove from the mix-up of units the Polybian units from the Legionary ones. As it stands, there is an apparently long period where the Romans are recruiting Polybians (and actually preferring them) along with a few new Legions, and mixing them all together.

I am at a loss here as yet how to fix this.....but I have a few ideas.

[Argent Usher]

Can you give me a link for all ROME script commands please, then i could share here some thoughts and ideas better.

THX A.U.

[tone]

With regard to legion recruitment.....could we give each legion an AOR of say 3 regions and mae the legion AORs non-overlapping?...then the chance of getting the right units combining into an army would be somewhat higher.

For my part I'm a bit concerned that higher level cavalry (barbarian nobles, xystophoroi, hetairoi) aren't really being recruited much by the AI apart from the horse archer factions which have only very basic infantry as an alternative. The weird thing is that the costs even for these decent cavalry units are pretty minimal, which suggests that the AI doesn't see them as very useful. I think it must be due to the AI's desire for certain charge / attack / defence ratios as they perform well in battles.

So I may have to revamp the cavalry stats signficantly to make them more desirable.

[dvk901]

Tone, would it make sense perhaps to make their numbers greater, and their stats weaker? I know the AI doesn't like low number units. Remember in RS1.5 that the AI was recruiting 'Governors' at one time by the bushels full. I had their bodyguard (which was infantry) set to 40 or 60 or something....it was high. I had to lower the bodyguard to like 6 or something before it would stop it!

Maybe increase numbers and price proportionally? It isn't just a matter of cost...the AI is just weird about recruiting.

[tone]

I did wonder about that. Maybe increase to 35 or 40?

It's strange - looking at mods like RTR and so on where sometimes the cost of some cavalry units is in the 1000s - I find it difficult to see why ours should be less.

Anyway - I'll try.

[dvk901]

My fault....remember I suggested that the cost should be based somewhat on a 'per man' basis rather than just the unit itself. I had it mind to 'fix' this exact same issue, bearing in mind that I didn't like the fact that the AI recruited cavalry so poorly. Barbarians in particular, at least in RS1.5....never did solve the problem of why they wouldn't recruit much. And I think 'other mods' may not exactly have solved the problem.

Also, try setting the following factions like so in 'descr_strat.txt' in the 'Imperial_campaign' folder:

faction romans_julii, trader stalin <<<<<<<< 'stalin' favors recruiting heavy and light infantry

faction romans_scipii, trader henry <<<<<biased towards heavy and light cavalry, missile infantry

faction macedon, religious smith <<<< 'smith' bias in recruiting is exactly 'level'

faction egypt, religious smith

faction seleucid, balanced smith

faction armenia, fortified smith

faction dacia, balanced smith

With the variety of units that these factions have...a more 'level' recruitment bias might work better.

[Mulattothrasher]

Dvk here are cities/towns that need to begin the game with the top level barracks for their faction:

Seleucids: Seleucia and Antiocheia

Ptolemies: Alexandria. ***Elephantine needs some form of elephants (armored or unarmored, towered or non towered) at the game's start because this region is where the Ptolemaic elephants that were rounded up in the wild were brought to and had been well before Ptolemy IV.

Arverni: Gergovia

Gallaecians: Brigantium

Boii: Vindobona

Free barbs: Tavion, Bibracte, Mediolanum, Bononia, and Camulodunum; capitols and power centers of the Galatians (Trocmi), Aedui, Insubres, Boii and Trinovantes.

Obviously there are more and its not a matter of simply "all capitols need the highest barracks", but also historical reasoning which, being pressed for time, I will have to explain later. Game balance may or may not allow for all this though so thats understandable too.

[dvk901]

The 'Free' factions, because of the fact that they cannot recruit anything outside their starting points (except mercs) have access to most of their best units right off the bat. It's one reason they are so hard to deal with...which is good.

I actually LIKE the idea of giving the Arverni and the Boii a 'kick-start' this way...and NOT the Belgae. The Belgae are pretty safe on their island if they lose their mainland possessions, but the Arverni are sandwiched between other factions without any fall-back. Same for the Boii. I would suggest that the Dacian capital, for sure, should be treated the same way, but not the Scythians, as they were relative 'new-comers' to that area (plus, they have a shorter less expensive barracks).

This is a good start. Thanks.