Macedon campaign ... first thoughts

[TTRouble]

Hi Guys

Spent quiet a few hours over the weekend testing and playing about with RS2, a Macedon campaign and a few custom battles.

First thoughts - the work you guys have done is absolutely stunning .. I know its been said many times but I've been taken back by how much better RS2 is compared to Rs1.6 visually, or any other RTW mod out there.

Custom Battles:

I played the custom battles first - Macedon vs SPQR and then Seleucids vs SPQR. A few pics of the unit types were missing for both Macedon and Seleucids (I'll post screen shots when I'm back at home in the relevant thread). Game play - a fair amount of lag esp when compared to 1.6. so much so that it made gameplay very difficult. I played both battles on my default 1.6 settings - unit size set to Huge and unit details high and several other settings to high. AA was set to off. Switching down everything except unit size to medium (will need to confirm) improved matters considerably - average FPS according to FRAPS in game was approx 35. The game still looks seriously impressive even at the new settings.

Battles - to win simply a lot harder. AI was a lot more smarter in its tactics. Some units esp the hoplites don;t seem to have that crushing impact that they had in 1.6. Phalanx units are definitively more robust and weren;t mauled like they can be in 1.6.

All units inc SPQR were set to no upgrades. SPQR - were pre reform legion. Total men approx 8000 in the game.

No crashes or anything that was out of place so far.

Campaign: I'm going to do a better post on the campaign in the relevant thread (with screenshots) but a wee heads up so far.

Depending on the city - right clicking on a unit or building type descriptions/info the pics are missing. Its usually one or the other but I've seen both not appear on one particular city. I've not taken a look at the descriptions in any real detail at the moment but I'm planning on doing so.

Game plan - to build the economy first and have Pellas as the main recruiting city for troops. The economy by year 5 was already booming (70-100k dinarii) profit at each turn, even when having to build up 3-4 of the cities from scratch. By year 10 - 200k profit. Corruption so far is nil.

Greeks and Sparta - at war after the 1st year. What I found odd was the AI not recruiting a lot of units for the Greeks in Athen's or Corinth, esp when their cities up in the Balkans were nearly at full stack. I would have thought the AI would attempt to protect both cities with as many troops as possible.

Battles - only with the rebels and so far nothing unusual. As per custom game, their definitely harder to beat and the opposing units are taking a lot longer to break.

I'm using the same sort of army composition as in 1.6. which was 4 x Phalanx (no levies), 2 x Hoplites (replacing Corinth/Athenian, etc), 2 x Royal Peltasts, 2 x Hypaspistai (replacing Spartan hoplites), 2 x Machairaphoroi Epilektoi, 3 x Thorakitai, 3 x archers and cavalry.

Question on unit descriptions - I had thought that both the Royal Peltasts and Hypaspistai were heavy infantry but from memory (I could be wrong) theyre weapon type is listed as "light". Is that correct ?

Plague - one of the cities end up having the plague just after year 5 - which was really surprising as the population was fairly low but I didn;t check the squalor levels as it was so early into the game.

Happiness - all of the cities are between 175-250% even at max Tax levels.

Cheers

TTrouble

[tone]

Am looking into the light vs heavy thing - it's only recently been flagged as a problem, but hopefully I've got the answer.

Unit and buildings cards are a pain - we're not sure why some are showing up as blanks and it may be one of those things that we have to live with for pushing the RTW engine beyond its limits.

I think DVK is working on the taxation to reduce happiness a little with higher levels of tax, but the bottom line is that your home territory cities will generally be quite happy but once you start expanding things become way more difficult.

You're playing on H/H?

[TTRouble]

Hey Tone

Sorry, forgot to say what I was playing at ..! So additional info :

playing on H/H as recommended. RWT engine is BI.

Hardware - Core i7 @ 2.8Ghz, 6GB Ram, ATi 4850 512MB, Windows 7 64 bit Home Premium.

TTRouble

[apple]

Hey Tone

Sorry, forgot to say what I was playing at ..! So additional info :

playing on H/H as recommended. RWT engine is BI.

Hardware - Core i7 @ 2.8Ghz, 6GB Ram, ATi 4850 512MB, Windows 7 64 bit Home Premium.

TTRouble

It wouldn't happen to be so that you are using an 27´i7 iMac?

[TTRouble]

It wouldn't happen to be so that you are using an 27´i7 iMac?

Hi Apple.. !

27" IMac.. nahh .. mines a custom build box .. and for a PC quite nice too . It was going to be a hackintosh but Windows 7 is nice enough for now.


TTrouble..

[DedlySerious]

on the unit and building cards ive found that if they are blank i exit the city screen go back into it and they are there
so basically i found its best just to be patient

[TTRouble]

Ok.. cool. I'll have to double check that and see if that works but I'm not sure if that was the case for me. I'll check tonight.

While I still have it in my head and I'm sure this has been mentioned already :

Sounds: Machairaphoroi Epilektoi - when you select them they state that theyre "Shield Legionaries"
Thorakitai - say "hoplites"

All other units that I've picked seem to be aok and I've not heard anything with the background music etc that seemed out of place or wrong.

Cheers

TTRouble

[dvk901]

Some units have a 'best case' sound they repeat when clicked on. We did the best we could to use existing RTW voices for everything since we never had anyone to redo them. Actually, Florin80 spent a lot of time on this and did a great job.

[Chernish]

TTRouble,
Please see what the situation with the relations of Macedonia with the Greeks and Sparta. Corinth passed Macedonian to engage the player in the Greek war in the early stages. But I had a feeling that Sparta is not strong enough. I would like her to have the troops were better and fought harder.

[TTRouble]

TTRouble,
Please see what the situation with the relations of Macedonia with the Greeks and Sparta. Corinth passed Macedonian to engage the player in the Greek war in the early stages. But I had a feeling that Sparta is not strong enough. I would like her to have the troops were better and fought harder.

Hi Chernish

I read through your campaign post before starting mine .. and very good it was too . My plan was to follow something similar to yours - to concentrate on the economy first, battle harden the units by fighting the rebels and only go to war if attacked.

Campaignwise, I started again last night as I hadn't turned off FOW and realised I should have been running RS2 via the BI.bat file. Now I noticed a few differences straight off :

* Apollonia now belonged to the Greeks, while Corinth was now part of Macedon

* Economy - slightly worse off than before, starting off with just 10,000 dinari

* No longer able to recruit Royal peltasts, Hypaspistai, Machairaphoroi Epilektoi, Thorakitai and Companion cavalry at Pellas. Theslonika is the only other city with a reasonable barracks level.

* The Greeks and Sparta were at war after the first turn but by year 2 had called a ceasefire. Unable to get the Greeks to agree to a ceasefire at all. Sparta captured Argos after 2 attempts. This is very different from the first go where Sparta basically over ran all of the Greek and Rebel cities with ease.

* No option to ask for an Alliance with Sparta, and some other factions as well.

* All unit costs (apart from merc's) was a lot lower than before but some building costs have significantly increased.

By year 3, the Greeks attacked Corinth and Edessa (it was very lightly garrisoned) and I defeated both armies. I then captured Olympia from the rebels with the army that beat the Greeks at Corinth but I was wondering whether I should have left the Spartan's to take it instead. I'm currently besieging Thebe but have been thinking of trying to achieve a ceasefire with the Greeks and lifting the seige.

Battlewise:

* A lot longer to finish off the opponent.

* Units don;t break until the General's now been killed or routs. Fighting the rebels at Olympia even though they were being surrounded and loosing they would not break until the General was killed.

* General with no body guards left is able to fend off 2 hoplite units and a charge from companion cavalry for a long time. Clearly, without his guard and being surrounded he shouldn't last too long.

* performance has improved - I was able to play on HIGH for unit details etc again. Only tested one battle at that setting - was getting between 30-45 FPS.

* noticed that some units face left or right but not forward when you've repositioned the formation. They only change and look ahead when the enemy is within range.

I'll post some pics as soon as I've uploaded them.

Cheers

TTRouble.

[Chernish]

TTRouble,
Thanks :-). IMHO it`s good ;-)

[tone]

Campaignwise, I started again last night as I hadn't turned off FOW and realised I should have been running RS2 via the BI.bat file. Now I noticed a few differences straight off :

* Apollonia now belonged to the Greeks, while Corinth was now part of Macedon

* Economy - slightly worse off than before, starting off with just 10,000 dinari

* No longer able to recruit Royal peltasts, Hypaspistai, Machairaphoroi Epilektoi, Thorakitai and Companion cavalry at Pellas. Theslonika is the only other city with a reasonable barracks level.

* The Greeks and Sparta were at war after the first turn but by year 2 had called a ceasefire. Unable to get the Greeks to agree to a ceasefire at all. Sparta captured Argos after 2 attempts.

Sounds like you were playing Macedon in the default campaign before, not in the Macedonian mod foldered campaign.

[TTRouble]

Hi Tone

yeah .. I should have checked and made sure before I started ! Ok, now a few questions regards the differences between the default campaign and the actual Macedon mod one:

* Traits and Qualities - in the default camp. all of the family members had some qualities and good to very good management skills but in the mod campaign thats not the case even for the faction leader. Managements skills for all family members for the first 10 years has been non existent, is that intentional ?

* The Economy - starting off with just 10,000 dinarii seems to be a bit low, esp as most building types that generate trade are now costing more. I know thats partially down to the management qualities of the generals. Into year 15 I have only one general thats got 3 Management bars and he's able to build level one buildings for 30-50% less than all of the others inc. the Faction leader but a little more $$$ at the start would be good. At the moment in year 15 ... the economy has slowed down quiet a bit in turns of profits per turn, so I'm only able to construct one or two building types per turn.

* Barracks - In the default campaign you can recruit the elite units in Pellas but in the mod campaign, thats not possible at the moment. I kicked off a very quick Selecuids campaign to see if there was any difference and I noticed that in that campaign, both Antioch and Selecuia had the top level barracks. So, I'm wondering why for Macedon that at the start you cannot recruit Royal Peltasts, etc from Pellas at the start.

* Factions demanding monies - I had the scythian's demand payment or they would attack but they only wanted 160 dinarii. Shouldn;t the AI be asking for a lot more ?

Regards the campaign itself...(Year 15) well, the Roman's have walked away for now, Sparta is becoming a menace as they've attacked Cornith twice but retreated from the battlefield, the Greeks are also building up stacks in Athens and Apollina, and now the Scythians have decided that they would invade as well. Now, I'm wondering whether to (1) take out the Scythians as they just retreat from the battle field and leave the greeks/Sparta alone for a bit or (2) remove the threat from both the Greeks and Sparta and then sort out the Scythians?

Cheers

TTRouble