The difficulty threshold.

[Myrsilus]

Am I only one to notice this?

When you start from the beginning and then, while suffering harsh difficulty slowly acquire about 15-20 settlements. Once you get to this stage, you have practically won the game, because the rest is mopping up (past the threshold, now the game is easy). Marius comes around by the time I acquire 25 settlements, but the game is almost boring and too easy by then anyhow. So I play the game with the same units all the time, and never fully appreciate the game after half way through.

Is there some way, it may be beyond the entire game, to make it so that yes the beginning of the game is hard, but even half way through when you have to deal with even bigger enemies?

Lets say for example I am playing RTR, I play as the Romans, once I conquer all of Italy, and then move on to say those Islands to the left and some of the Gallic regions, once I have done this I am making enough profit to afford big armies while sacrificing defence on the unbordering cities. Those big armies I make, never lose, and all I have to do is apply this same method over and over and over and I win. It's sad.


Another fault I seem to have noticed is that when defending a city, I can place my whole army in the center and let the enemy take the walls, by the time they reach the centre they are tired and 1/4 dead from tower archers. Then I finish them off like ants.

Don't believe me? I had three militia hoplites and one javelin unit (150 men approx), and I defeated a Roman army of about 700 men applying this method. Mind you, by the end I had about 23 men left and I only won because the enemy - still with 200 men, were fleeing.

[MoROmeTe]

Play Roma mod. It is insanely hard as the Romans in the early game.

And maybe check out different other mods, play house rules and restrain from ant unhistorical practice. That should make things harder...

As for your other problem try and confront the enemy outside the walls or at least on the walls. It was totally unhistorical for an army to retreat and make its stand in the town center...

[Space Voyager]

This problem also has roots in the save/load bug. By the time you have 25 settlements you need to save/load "more often" (with less turns made) thus destroying any possible strategies the AI factions might have had. This makes them stagnate and none of them is able to really become a superstate (as you have) to pose a real chalenge.

EDIT: Ok, if the AI factions would be able to use diplomacy and join forces against you would be helpfull, too. Sadly I've never seen them do it.

[player1]

This problem also has roots in the save/load bug. By the time you have 25 settlements you need to save/load "more often" (with less turns made) thus destroying any possible strategies the AI factions might have had. This makes them stagnate and none of them is able to really become a superstate (as you have) to pose a real chalenge.

EDIT: Ok, if the AI factions would be able to use diplomacy and join forces against you would be helpfull, too. Sadly I've never seen them do it.

It's not all about load/save bug too.

I played one test game, were I just skipped turns and built up my 2 brutii cities, for about 100-150 years.

First, AI has a tendency for bad judgement about how big force is needed to take a city (from other AI).
So, it often happend for it to lose siege assault, while there are several other his units just few tiles away.
If he combined them, city would've been his.


Another problem becomes evident after 80+ years in the game.

Without inferirence in save/load problem, several AI's become superpowers (Egypt, britan, and pontus, scipii and greek in my game).
But, their cities got big and they started to suffer revolts and shrinking of thier empires.

They just couldn't stand big cities.

Scipii that had sicily and whole west/central aftica, and lost all aftican territories by rebellion. they succeded in retaking few of them, but after seleral turns they rebelled again, and again, until evetually they didn't got "ejected" from africa completly, making it a rebel paradise. Some of those "ejected" units actully started going back to italy by land!!! (you know egypt, armenia, scythia, thracia, italy), another flaw in AI.

Then I feel quily that by using single spy, I made them lose two provinces in sicily, that they never seemed to reclaim.
They also got in big debt, so i don't think they'll ever recover in this game. I tested giving them a gift of 200,000 and it was not enough to make them have positive balance.
So they were just "on life support" with starting provinces and sardinia, never to recover.


Egypt strated to shrink too.

And I easily succeeded to start dozen rebellions in greek cities, until they eventually built big couiter-spy network.

Really, it seems that Brits were in best shape, probably becaue their cities were not too big (although even they lost north euroasia to rebels).



P.S.
Interesting that Julii almost haven't expanded from begging territories.
Scipii made alliance with Gauls, which made Julii passive.
Later Gauls became Scipii protectorate, which made Jullii imprisoned in Italy (they did got few territories later when Spain started eating Gauls).

[Myrsilus]

Yes, that computer mind AI thing is quite sad, but also funny.

I never forget when they were attacking my city and my army was exiting the walls to fight, I got my army to stand still, and the AI moved its army right under my walls and stood there while being eaten alive by arrows from the towers.

The AI doesn't have any idea about tower arrows, and sacrifices so many men because of it.

[Space Voyager]

Another problem becomes evident after 80+ years in the game.

Without inferirence in save/load problem, several AI's become superpowers (Egypt, britan, and pontus, scipii and greek in my game).
But, their cities got big and they started to suffer revolts and shrinking of thier empires.

They just couldn't stand big cities.

Crap, this is bad news... I never had the nerves to test such things (but I do know I used your fix mod, so I know you did quite a lot of it) and I admit I didn't think RTW had problems THIS deep. The AI is unable to stop the population growth! I admit that even a lot of people have problems with it, but when you get the hang of it...

This is disturbing news, becouse it means no AI is able to pose a threath later in the game. I just hope BI will change some of these problems.

[Nebuchadnezzar]

Got 25 settlements and bored its time to attack egypt!

[Shaggy1973]

RTR 6.0 tries to address this by removing law bonuses from many buildings. This will lead to less income (as your outlaying provinces will have to have very low tax levels to stop rebellion) and you will have to keep armies in the general area to quell rebellions. Should make the late game more interesting me thinks

[Simetrical]

This is commonly known as the "steamroller effect". It's definitely known—many people have your experience of giving up after it gets too easy.

-Simetrical

[PatWest]

Thats what got me into modding in the first place. I'm now quite pleased with the way it plays. Oh I still have other things to mod like hidden resources but otherwise I've created a much tougher version to play. I needed a much more extreme economic situation. Their's a thread called Challenging economics that discusses various ways we ( the novice modders ) have attempted to do this. One big one for me was making it much more expensive to raise and or maintain an army. Another trick I use is to shut off production of lesser units as you or the comp advances up the tech tree. Now battles are much more important, I can't afford to lose big battles as much. The comp hits me with high quality units most of the time now. I added Sinuhets formation Mod and the comp fights a little better. I modded the strat txt file for a accelerated start, that way the game doesn't drag on in the earlier phases and is still more restrained in the latter phases. I never liked the post apocolyptic start conditions anyway, this isn't Civilization 4 . Their are many ways to make this game way more challenging.

I hope this helps.

[Spajjder]

Yes I agree! But the thing that really is annoying me is those rebelions or cities like syracuse. I cant stand the provinces that isnt directly by the mediterian sea, the other provinces have such big distances between them that the distance to capital is making rebelions for sure. Yes I also think that it should be some problem with citizens but now its really absurd, I dont want to spend my time to calm citizents.. I want the challenge to be conqering powerfull and equal kingdoms like mine. I dont really understand why it isn't so in rome, in medieval you always ended up with having three or two equal kingdoms ruling the map and sending each other angry looks
Not even the romans seem to be able to build up a big empire.:*( Its a shame!

Space Voyager: i didn't really understand what you said there? why eh, cant the ai build empires if you load?

[Space Voyager]

Space Voyager: i didn't really understand what you said there? why eh, cant the ai build empires if you load?

Becouse all the sieges are broken. This way (later in the game, when you save/load once per two or three turns) no new cities are occupied and the AI factions are forced to maintain small forces, since none of them can have a great empire that would support large armies.

[Spajjder]

ah... cant it be fixed with a mod then?

[PatWest]

Becouse all the sieges are broken. This way (later in the game, when you save/load once per two or three turns) no new cities are occupied and the AI factions are forced to maintain small forces, since none of them can have a great empire that would support large armies.

Please don't flame me on this. The reload 'bug' is not the primary reason for sieges being lifted. Yes the AI does change its mind after reloading. It also changes it's mind all of the time. it only seems to carry out 35%-40% of its sieges anyway and will still maintain the majority of sieges after you reload. Their are some more fundemental problems with the AI than the reload bug, which in my humble opinion is way overstated.

[Space Voyager]

This is commonly known as the "steamroller effect". It's definitely known—many people have your experience of giving up after it gets too easy.

True, but it would be much less obvious if there would be no save/load bug (see my previous post) and (and this would be especially great) if other factions - at least those that are inclined to help eachother becouse they belong to the same "civilisation" - would, when one of them is faced with an overwhelming enemy, make an alliance, give each other military access and coordinate their allied forces.

In reality I'm quite sure this would happen and I was unpleasantly surprised when it turned out that even though the diplomacy is implemented and all options I listed are open, this NEVER happens.

[Rowan11088]

Thanks for that research player1, I think that's actually really interesting to see...I kinda always figured that without load/save the AI would become huge every time, but apparently it can't deal with its own size either...Very sad Of course, in many mods the AI gets bonuses to population order and such (thinking of SPQR here mainly) that probably would avoid this problem and allow them to legitimately get large. Still, another blow to CA in my mind...

[PatWest]

'I must say that I don't know where you've seen the majority of the sieges to be maintained. I've only seen it once - but I use FOW, so I don't see the whole map.' Quote from Space Voyager.

That part about not flaming me was inspired by some of the hot tempered debating I've seen on this subject before.

I keep FOW on also, otherwise the game is not very realistic and the one time I left it off by accident it took to long for turns to complete with follow AI movements on.

I've been doing a lot of modding lately and was playing a campaign as Pontus while jumping in and out constantly to adjust things as I went along. Most of the sieges, in fact the vast majority of the ones I could see at the time were maintained. I also have observed this from day one playing this game. On the other hand I have also observed the AI change its mind just enough times to know that yes indeed their is a reload issue. I just have never seen the severity that others describe. The computer doesn't like to carry sieges to their conclusion much anyway and recently I keep getting sieged and when I sally out they just runaway. I think the AI makes a lot of initial miscaculations and then has to change its mind when confronted with reality.

[Varsity]

Sorry to bump such an old thread, but was this ever fixed? I can't stand the steamroller effect and I've never managed to finish a game, even a short one, because of it!