IB: SAJ - Praise and Criticism

[Philippon]

When it comes to mods covering the later Roman Empire, IB has persistently proven to be the most professional and well done IMHO. I always come back to it though I have tried others.

The thing I enjoy most is the unit variety, there are dozens of units to raise and recruit and as your territory expands you get EVEN MORE units to raise and recruit. And likewise as you expand and encounter new enemies, you find that the old formulations of troops in your stack no longer works and you need new types and new tactics to deal with this band of barbarians or that band of Rebel Romans.

Likewise you have a good spread of provinces which keeps the map itself balanced.

In short, there is a vast array of items to build and recruit and combine, plenty of thinking things out, and good challenges for the player who either wishes to conquer the world, or just put together a really cool empire that endures.

That being said, my only real issue is with the WRE.

I understand what you are trying to do. You want to create in some fashion the economic woes of the WRE which contributed to her downfall. I think however, that you have opted to do this the lazy man's way. The issue seems to be, once I sort out all the units at my disposal as the WRE, a surfeit of cavalry which, once disbanded, has no impact what so ever on my army balance and likewise brings me into the black again in just one turn. I've seen this tactic both in the 410 scenario and 365 as well which are both favorites of mine.

In short, in order to solve my economic woes in the WRE, I just move all my surplus cavalry into my cities and disband them and vola . . . I have a profit on game turn two and armies still guarding the limaes.

Allow me to make a proposal.

Understand that my knowledge of modding is scanty, I know how to adjust a few things here and there, but for the most part have very little grasp on just how much is done. Nevertheless, I trust my observations in the vairous mods I've played seeing what can be done will prove a adequate guide for my critique and proposal.

Secondly, while my primary historical knowledge is more meta-physics than military, I am not entirely bereft of knowledge regarding the history of this time (and can point out a couple of very fashionable historical mistakes in the Vanilla Bi regarding the Riot which destroyed the Odium and "Athanasius' New Testament".)


The problems of the Western Roman Empire, in game terms, can be summed up in three issues.

First - A decided hesitancy on the general Roman population to go into the military, leading to an increasing need to bring in non-Romans into the ranks to keep the army at full strength.

Second - A catastrophic taxation system which is shutting down the Roman mercantile/tradesman/middle class which results in . . .

Third - A decline in population, not in actual numbers of people living in the Empire, but in numbers living in the cities where one can tax them and recruit them effectively. Everyone is going back to the country and the farmer boys are staying at home since there are no longer any bright lights and new vistas in the big cities on the horizon.

To set this up, and make it a genuine issue which is going to plague the WRE player for a Very Long Time in terms of game turns, you need to set it up, not in military placement of units, but in the very construction of the cities of the Empire itself.

First - You don't want any agricultural development in any city what so ever. Likewise public health is also to be as undeveloped as possible.

Second - To keep the squalor from throwing the whole thing into rebellion, you want as much public happiness works to be installed as necessary to enable the player to have the city set at the Highest tax rating with only the Governor and one milita unit (the least expensive available) as the garrison. Make sure that the various religious buildings are also developed so that they, with the installed leader and the adjacent provinces provide a zero sum game for the various religious factions in the city. No one religion has any local advantage over the other until the player decides to upgrade one religious building or . . . changes the governor. That should provide more than a little restlessness at crucial moments.

Third - No military development of any real substance. While the WRE starts out with sufficient stacks of high quality armies to defend it's borders, there is nothing it can recuit save Militia and Barbarian troops to fill in the ranks as the Roman armies begin to suffer attrition from the attacks of the Barbarians. They can put them in awesome armor, but they can't replace the legions. Not just yet.

Fourth - No economic development in the towns and cities either save a couple of ports to connect Britian with Gaul, and a port in Nova Carthago, Carthage, and Rome. The Roman Roads on the other hand, are at the height of their development so they should be as good as they can get given the local population base in the province.

As for the military set up itself - the WRE has good Limitanae in each of it's border cities and a fort with a single limitanae unit at each choke point along the Rhine and Danube. In Africa, the forts provide no real assistance since the Berbers can just go around them for the most part, so that should be represented by watch towers.

And of course for the Barbarians along his borders, you don't need to put down piles of stacks immediately, all you need to do is stuff the Barbarian cities with a high population, give them a good starting stack of gold, and a means to raise a stack of troops to attack Rome quickly for the first twenty or so turns until they run out of population and the AI will do the rest for the most part.



So when the Western Roman Player comes to play his game. He should see a nice arrangement of good stacks of troops which will be quite adequate to defend his borders from the Barbarians and a full array of cities all content at the highest tax bracket and a small profit in income to boot. . .

And a disaster waiting to happen. The Western Roman Empire player who spends all his time building up his Military Industrial Complex will suddenly discover cash shortages becoming more and more of an issue as game wears on since each city is producing just a little less gold each turn. If on the other hand he works non-stop at building up his population base and economic base, he'll see his Armies slowly becoming less and less capable of defending his Empire.

It's going to be a real problem for him because he can't solve it in a single turn. Every, and I mean every city is in decline and due to the lack of health and agricultural development, he has no means of stopping the decline by just tax adustment. He will have to plan ahead and engage in a conservative strategy if he has any chance of pulling it out. Long term deterioration you see, is a lot harder to reverse since it takes so long to build up the necessary infrastructure you will need to turn it around.

It should, if I've figured it out right, be a nail biter for quite some time, but for the typical player for the first time . . . it's going to be quite a shock for him when the serious shortages of gold start to manifest themselves and his armies get lower and lower in quality.

In short, by imaginative underdevelopment in the WRE provinces, you have that famous southbound economy which is going to hit hard on the troops on the frontier and the Emperor has got to literally rebuild the entire thing from the ground up with little cash to do it with for starters.

And that, in my mind, does a better job of creating the crises of the WRE.

That is my proposal, I hope you find it intriguing as a new idea.

[Antiochos VII Sidetes]

If the campaign you described is indeed possible on the RTW engine, then it should be done immediately. But IB comes as close to pulling this off as it can; I don't know if such a campaign is even designable.

[julianus heraclius]

The issue seems to be, once I sort out all the units at my disposal as the WRE, a surfeit of cavalry which, once disbanded, has no impact what so ever on my army balance and likewise brings me into the black again in just one turn. I've seen this tactic both in the 410 scenario and 365 as well which are both favorites of mine.

In short, in order to solve my economic woes in the WRE, I just move all my surplus cavalry into my cities and disband them and vola . . . I have a profit on game turn two and armies still guarding the limaes.

Have you tried the 355AD Campaign. Now that one is pretty damn tough. The economy goes backward pretty quick and with enemies all around makes it pretty difficult to disband your army (BTW, I'm not a big fan of reducing the army anyway). You'll find, that if played without disbanding your army (they are there to protect the provinces anyway), your economy get shot for quite a while. In both the 355AD Campaign as Julianus and the 361AD Campaign, again as Julianus, you are faced with a choice the very first turn, as to whether to use your starting denarii to either go for economic growth or go for recruitment and retraining of your existing army. Either way you will be left with a rather large hole in your economy for quite a while, which makes for an interesting challenge, as you have to defend your empire with virtually what you have which is a pretty damn hard task, but well worth the challenge.

[Philippon]

No I have not tried the 355 campaign though I did install it and look at it briefly to see how it looked. I like starting as the WRE because of the long term challenge it possesses and so in spite of looking at the 355 and 361 campaigns, I gravitated towards the 365 and right now I'm playing it out, tiptoeing through the CTD's so that I don't have to fight five gajillion battles all over again. Nevertheless I am very much waiting for the final product mod so I won't have to deal with the CTD's and can enjoy playing as the WRE after I do my own particular tweaks.

As for the campaign I proposed being designable, it is quite designable since all it depends upon is the initial placement of buildings in each provincial city. It's not at all hard to set up a city so that the first time you open it in the camapaign you find that it has a Temple of Jupiter, a Christian Shrine, and a Judaic Synagogue and Arena, but needs to have sewers built, a trader built, and land clearance built. Likwise, it is lacking a milita barracks, stables, and blacksmith.

You see, the game engine itself is designed so that if you have inadequate construction in the city, the starting population of that city will decline and if enough population incentive buildings are missing, it can be declining even at Low taxation.

The trick in the construction has always been to develope your cities so that each one produces a profit with a rising population so that you have more profit next turn. Likewise, each unit takes x amount of population from that city so you want to be able to raise troops in all your cities so that you don't end up depopulating your chief cities of recruitment.

If you can raise 20 units of 200 men each in a city in a single turn, that cities population is going to drop by 4,000 in that single turn. And if you have a city of 40,000 which has a 1% population growth each turn (400) . . . well you do that each turn and you'll find that you will depopulate that in fairly short order.

And furthermore, while that city looks more and more profitable each turn as less and less of the maintenance costs for the entire empire are taken from it's share . . . you are in fact, getting less and less income each turn as well though it does not appear to be so in regards to that city. This is why you can sack all those rebel cities and see a jump in your income, but you'll never see the jump in your income that you would see if you just occupied that city instead. The only time you EVER want to sack a city is if it's population is simply too big to be governed by the occupying army.

This is one of those little confusions which alot of RTW players experience because they think that the city is losing money when they see negative numbers for the taxation. So they sack the city because then they see that the city is producing a 'surplus'. And it is, it's population base and economic developement indicate that it is producing more income than it's 'fair share' as it were.

The city which is generating 'negative' income is in fact generating positive income which is going to maintain your armies and finance your recruitment, it's just far less than it could be producing. The negative number is there to tell you that the cities income is less than it could be given the size of your army in relation to that cities economic infrastructure and if you build up it's economy, you'll see that negative number, over time and construction, turn into a positive.

Right now I'm playing RTR and each one of my Roman cities is in the black because I've worked so hard on economic developement and likewise I've got three fronts covered by three Roman armies and don't need to build an additional six Roman armies. Had I nine Roman armies out there, then most of my cities would be showing negative numbers for income.

[Riothamus]

When it comes to mods covering the later Roman Empire, IB has persistently proven to be the most professional and well done IMHO. I always come back to it though I have tried others.


The problems of the Western Roman Empire, in game terms, can be summed up in three issues.

First - A decided hesitancy on the general Roman population to go into the military, leading to an increasing need to bring in non-Romans into the ranks to keep the army at full strength.

Second - A catastrophic taxation system which is shutting down the Roman mercantile/tradesman/middle class which results in . . .

Third - A decline in population, not in actual numbers of people living in the Empire, but in numbers living in the cities where one can tax them and recruit them effectively. Everyone is going back to the country and the farmer boys are staying at home since there are no longer any bright lights and new vistas in the big cities on the horizon.

To set this up, and make it a genuine issue which is going to plague the WRE player for a Very Long Time in terms of game turns, you need to set it up, not in military placement of units, but in the very construction of the cities of the Empire itself.

Thanks for taking the time Philippon for such a well thought out critique

Absolute agreement with this but not soo much on how it should be represented in the mod (just me own opinion )...my ideas below that I have implemented in my upcoming upgrade.

Fifth century issue
-The first point: A toughie but an emphasis needs to be placed on the use of the foederati. By the 3rd decade of the 5th century the use of the foederati(barbarian faction armies) became the back bone of the Roman army This was clearly depicted by the WRE composition of Aetius army in 451AD at the Battle of the Catalaunian Fields...Settling the second point will fix the prob of relying too hevily on foederati.

-Second point: The middle class(curiales class)was largely responsible for trade and a healthy commerce was getting squeezed out of existence by the new provincial system set up with provincial city governors. Civil governors now set in more provinces were needed to keep the taxation machine going. They provided the Empire with its infra structure and its army, but unfortunately at the expense of feeding upon itself to do so..Both the curiales class and the provincial civil Governor need to be implemented to portray this conflict and for the player to experience and to try and deal with this huge issue.

Third point: Depopulation of cities to rural areas is tricky for the pop Representative for the provinces is the city itself. Never the less there are ways still to do this. It can be modified so that the British Isle factions are limited to large towns and minor cities and also to any faction that conquerers that region. Barbarian factions in general can have far less pop growth and will feel a depopulation when they take over large WRE cities. They were the new representitives over the Roman cities they took over and kept a similar Roman system in place to run the city, thus they ran into the same issues the Romans had with taxation. Their own cities should level off at the city level..In the possession of the WRE, cities should feel the struggle of maintianing large populations and decline somewhat as the empire continues to feed off itself.....Having said all this, I'm of the idea though that the player should have the abilities, the tools within the game to possibly more or less straighten this out.

Its important I think to not constrict the game too much or not to get too carried away with all this. There needs still a strong sense of potential for all the factions but a feeling of a crisis at hand especially for the WRE. The game needs to be when all done and said a fun game to play..but very challenging

[Philippon]

Rio: Third point: Depopulation of cities to rural areas is tricky for the pop Representative for the provinces is the city itself. Never the less there are ways still to do this. It can be modified so that the British Isle factions are limited to large towns and minor cities and also to any faction that conquerors that region. Barbarian factions in general can have far less pop growth and will feel a depopulation when they take over large WRE cities. They were the new representatives over the Roman cities they took over and kept a similar Roman system in place to run the city, thus they ran into the same issues the Romans had with taxation. Their own cities should level off at the city level..In the possession of the WRE, cities should feel the struggle of maintaining large populations and decline somewhat as the empire continues to feed off itself.....Having said all this, I'm of the idea though that the player should have the abilities, the tools within the game to possibly more or less straighten this out.

Me: I would not do that per sae since my grasp of history has always suggested to me that a big city can pop up anywhere given the right time and place. Given that the game engine seems to base the population growth on the quality of farming *Land Clearance, Estates, etc.* and health infrastructure *aqueducts, sewers, etc.* one only has to build those items to bring population up . . . but supposing those could not be built unless you had a proper trader, forum, etc.? And supposing you upped the price of building such trade faculties? That large price could represent not just the cost of correcting the tax struction and governmental abuses, but a long time factor could be put in as well.

In short . . . it takes ten turns and 5,000 to build a Marketplace in a city and that enables you to build Land Clearance and Sewers (as an example).

Like you I tend to think that a player ought to have the tools needed to make it right, but likewise, make making it right somewhat difficult.

The trick has always been trying to recreate the historical situation without making it deterministic e.g. you will be stuck with this circumstance and can't change it.

[Riothamus]

Rio: Third point: Depopulation of cities to rural areas is tricky for the pop Representative for the provinces is the city itself. Never the less there are ways still to do this. It can be modified so that the British Isle factions are limited to large towns and minor cities and also to any faction that conquerors that region. Barbarian factions in general can have far less pop growth and will feel a depopulation when they take over large WRE cities. They were the new representatives over the Roman cities they took over and kept a similar Roman system in place to run the city, thus they ran into the same issues the Romans had with taxation. Their own cities should level off at the city level..In the possession of the WRE, cities should feel the struggle of maintaining large populations and decline somewhat as the empire continues to feed off itself.....Having said all this, I'm of the idea though that the player should have the abilities, the tools within the game to possibly more or less straighten this out.



Me: I would not do that per sae since my grasp of history has always suggested to me that a big city can pop up anywhere given the right time and place. Given that the game engine seems to base the population growth on the quality of farming *Land Clearance, Estates, etc.* and health infrastructure *aqueducts, sewers, etc.* one only has to build those items to bring population up . . . but supposing those could not be built unless you had a proper trader, forum, etc.? And supposing you upped the price of building such trade faculties? That large price could represent not just the cost of correcting the tax struction and governmental abuses, but a long time factor could be put in as well.

In short . . . it takes ten turns and 5,000 to build a Marketplace in a city and that enables you to build Land Clearance and Sewers (as an example).

Like you I tend to think that a player ought to have the tools needed to make it right, but likewise, make making it right somewhat difficult.

The trick has always been trying to recreate the historical situation without making it deterministic e.g. you will be stuck with this circumstance and can't change it.

Hi Philippon..great stuff

More or less we are on the same page am implementing somewhat what your saying about a proper building etc..for pop increases and it corresponds to the factions historical advancements. The Romans and Sassanids having the fullest potentials for achieving a turn around. Although the Sassanids and the Empire East dont experience the decay as the WRE do. The Huns may achieve tech but through conquering cities with the creation of an advisory gov.(similar to a building) The Picts for instance unfortunately would not have those same abilities to acquire higher tech..but still they would have a potential to achieve a cultural greatness but on a certain level not comparable to the Romans or even most of the other factions.

[Aenima]

If this could be done, it would be bloody fantastic. I agree that generally, by disbanding expensive units and building up the economy, the WRE can become incredibly powerful in just about all campaigns it's included in, but this plan....if it could be implemented, man that'd be awesome. Great idea OP, let's hope it's a possibility to be included in games!

[Julianus Flavius]

I agree. Currently, if the player should choose to go as the WRE in anything except IJ (Because the whole empire is one helluva lot harder to manage) he can become a collosus very easily.
I think underdeveloped cities would be the way to go here. Also chronic population problems and lack of good recruitment facilities, especially in the heart of the empire. Let a range of good units be avaliable on the limes but when the barbarians capture those cities, the Roman player finds themselves with no more of those lovely Palatinae barracks, and needs to go back to Limitaeni and Foedrati.