RTR VII FoE difficulty

[Pat89]

Hi everyone

With FoE released for quiet some time now and with four patches to update it, I was just curious to hear what you all think about it. And in special the difficulty of both campaign and battles. Don't be afraid to speak the truth if it's negative. It will only help us improve RTR VII and maybe even FoE in another patch...

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How's the finances? I've already seen reports of people saying it's too easy as Celtiberia to quickly get a lot of money early in the campaign. But how about the long campaigns? Do finances get more tough as you progress in your campaign? And how about the other factions?

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Is expanding too easy or too difficult? Have you figured a way that works best to expand? What type of government do you prefer to build: short build time and only AOR units or long to build but in the end full faction units? Or do you maybe use a different version for each situation?
And an important question, did we explain well enough (via the manual and ingame descriptions) how to deal with the unrest in newly conquered regions. Did you know your troubles should be mostly gone upon building a second level government?

If not, what do you think would be a good way to explain this to the player? Make the manual more detailed/complete or maybe more ingame tips in the building descriptions or something entirely different?

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About battles, have you found any major issues? Are there units you tend to create whole stacks of because they're powerful and cheap? Have you seen the AI do this? Are AI army compositions varied enough? Does it make sense, the way the AI deploys and composes it's armies?

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Thanks for taking the time to read this and thanks in advance if you can give us some feedback.

~ PatricianS

[Veliky Kaiser Theos]

I found the Greek campaigns quiet easy, and same with the Gallic campaign, but I found the Celtiberians to be quiet challenging, not because of the Barbaroi constantly sending stacks against me, but because that lead to me conscripting my entire population.

[Pat89]

Ok, good to know

What made the Gallic and Epeirote campaigns easy?

[Veliky Kaiser Theos]

Ok, good to know

What made the Gallic and Epeirote campaigns easy?

I can't remember much about the Gallic campaign. I think it was the relative isolation from other factions while I attacked the Romans.

The Epeirote campaign wasn't challenging because the Carthaginians didn't even try to defend Sicily, only sending an army after I conquered it, which did nothing no matter how few units were in the city next to them. After taking Sicily and Illyria with little resistance I could afford to throw full stacks at the Romans.

[Arkaeyn]

Do the later FOE patches include the land bridge between Sicily and Italy? That was supposed to help the AI ignoring it.

[Sphere]

The travel distance for ships needs to be greatly increased. Carthage to Rome should be only take a turn or a turn-and-a-half even if you include the abstract things such as provisioning, loading, repairing etc. I mean in reality you could get from Carthage to Rome in a few days, but in game it takes close to a year. I think this might help the AI with landing armies as the BI engine does force naval invasions, but with the slow boats I think it cannot get there in time to save Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, Carthago Nova etc.

FOE does do a very good job at slowing down expansion early in the game, and even into the mid game sometimes but once you secure a sizable chunk like Italy or Spain, your money and manpower becomes massive and the AI factions stagnate. This is however a trademark of any RTW game so I don't know if you can do much about it. I can only suggest cutting back economic bonus' for high level civilized buildings and health/pop bonus' for high level barbarian buildings as those are the main things that strap you down early on, and the AI doesn't seem to know what to do with big pop and money late in the game. If you could find a way to translate the shoe-string feel of the early game through to the end game it truly would be epic, but I don't know how you could do it.

I think part of the problem is that the AI likes to garrison every little town even if not its not needed, but the player can usually void most of the small towns and put just a governor in the main cites so the player can roll around with a big stack while the AI is all spread out. I don't know if there is a way to compensate for this, but I can tell it does offer a huge advantage once you have a well developed and protected heartland. The carthage AI for example probably keeps 2-3 stacks worth of garrison units in N. Africa at all times.

[Pat89]

The travel distance for ships needs to be greatly increased. Carthage to Rome should be only take a turn or a turn-and-a-half even if you include the abstract things such as provisioning, loading, repairing etc. I mean in reality you could get from Carthage to Rome in a few days, but in game it takes close to a year. I think this might help the AI with landing armies as the BI engine does force naval invasions, but with the slow boats I think it cannot get there in time to save Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, Carthago Nova etc.

Unfortunately this is impossible. Movement on the stratmap is tied to both land a sea units. So if we increase the movement to be able to do like you said, then units would be able to walk from Italy to Iberia in one move.

There are of course traits to help with differntiate between land and sea units, but if we assign a trait to a ship, you won't be able to merge it anymore. So you'll be stuck with single ship fleets or merge them directly when they're spawned at the port. We did use this before, but we found the not being able to merge bit more annoying than not fast enough movement.

If we would assign a trait to the generals to slow down their movement, then we could increase the overall movement. But only family members can recieve traits, so that would mean a simple captain can walk much further with an army than one with a general.

FOE does do a very good job at slowing down expansion early in the game, and even into the mid game sometimes but once you secure a sizable chunk like Italy or Spain, your money and manpower becomes massive and the AI factions stagnate. This is however a trademark of any RTW game so I don't know if you can do much about it. I can only suggest cutting back economic bonus' for high level civilized buildings and health/pop bonus' for high level barbarian buildings as those are the main things that strap you down early on, and the AI doesn't seem to know what to do with big pop and money late in the game. If you could find a way to translate the shoe-string feel of the early game through to the end game it truly would be epic, but I don't know how you could do it.

We have implemented systems already that makes your economy more tight in the late campaign than normal, but this RTW problem is so strong, that it can't be solved with just one system. However, like you say, limiting population growth for higher level cities is indeed an option to make things more difficult.

I think part of the problem is that the AI likes to garrison every little town even if not its not needed, but the player can usually void most of the small towns and put just a governor in the main cites so the player can roll around with a big stack while the AI is all spread out. I don't know if there is a way to compensate for this, but I can tell it does offer a huge advantage once you have a well developed and protected heartland. The carthage AI for example probably keeps 2-3 stacks worth of garrison units in N. Africa at all times.

Yes, that's indeed a problem... The AI doesn't understand that minor regions (MiR) should be left ungarrisoned most of the time. We already have a smart money script for the AI, but that only gives money and doesn't change the annual turnover. I have a system in with which I hope to be able to counter this, but I have to convince my teammates first that we should try this system

[Veliky Kaiser Theos]

Also I noticed that captains are able to march armies much quicker in winter than generals, as they don't get traits and therefore are weather-proof.

[Caligula Caesar]

Btw Pat, in reality, it didn't take so long for armies to march as in RTW games (though it would be a bit annoying if they could march that fast, because you could not defend yourself properly). For instance, Hannibal left Carthago Nova in the late Spring of 218 BC and reached the Rhone in September, roughly one of our turns.

[Arkaeyn]

The marching/sailing time is one of those things where we're damned if we do, damned if we don't. Having shorter move rates is necessary, as CC says, for gameplay purposes. Without it, it would be much much easier to overrun enemies in a hurry, extremely unrealistically. On the other hand, in the short term, it means moving armies takes an unrealistic amount of time.

[Sphere]

Unfortunately this is impossible. Movement on the stratmap is tied to both land a sea units. So if we increase the movement to be able to do like you said, then units would be able to walk from Italy to Iberia in one move.

Is it possible to mod the movement bonus of roads and/or map tiles? If you cannot increase the movement rates of ships, perhaps you could slow down land movement.

[Maurits]

Why would one build roads when they slow down movement? And also, roads are not everywhere at game start, and one can't make them everywhere at that point because of their trade bonus, which is quite important in VII

[ricka83]

Hi,

as a predominantly roman player i was impressed with the diffeculty and ballance of the campaign.
playing on H/H, i found the early game a real struggle to balance my finances against construction and troop recruitment but after quite a few turns in the red and some trial and error i quickley figured out a good balance and by the middle game i was able to start a decent amount of expansion.

the battle against Pyhruus was just awsome, i went in excpecting my flexible lines to be able to run rings round the hoplites and phalanxes and my javelinmen to scare off the elephants. my only concern was their cav. Imagine my shock!, i mean a real moment.
Now the romans did loose there early encounters with this army so i know the player is supposed to loose (helps balance the finances if you do) so i wasnt too annoyed . Again, after a bit of paitience and a lot of practice i can beat Pyhruus almost as many times as im schooled by him so.....

in closeing, a very balanced and challenging campaign.

[Lord Dakier]

Well to put it quite plainly. Myself (CeltIberia) and Carthage have been battling for the same region for about 15 game years. Two of my full stack armies were defeated. Not to mention whenever I take the settlement I get kicked out only a few turns later because the disposition won't lift off 0%. I tried to claim the land bridge and stop them supplying it however, when it rebelled the rebellion managed to defeat one army and thus I had to move my bridge camped army. Even kiled about 4 generals in one battle. The Gauls I'm flying through, they're getting beaten two settlements at a time. With Carthage I still lack a proper base of operations in Africa.

As for the money side, I'm actually struggling halfway through my campaign. Trying to play in a realistic sense with fighting on several fronts. Had two armies for the war in the north east against the Gauls. One for Carthage in the south but later two and then one trying to take the Carthaginian island directly east of the Poleis faction who I'm allied with. Then I have one unit of light infantry in every settlement, but an extra one for every major settlement and another extra for capitals. When I raise one or two armies but have those stock armies in there fronts thats when I struggle for cash.

My problem with this is that not all settlements will accept my ruling especially from Carthage I do kind of like this though because I always have enemies. The Romans don't seem to be doing anything. We're both allied and fighting yet, they just fight for the first settlement.

To be totally honest though I begin to lose interest in the battles and just auto resolve alot of the time so I can only really blame myself for alot of my defeats against Carthage.

[Pat89]

Thanks for the detailed response

About that Carthaginian settlement, did you take all surrounding minor regions to help you convert the settlement to your culture before you invade?

[Lord Dakier]

Yeah It was the large piece of land in africa. I forget the name. I have captured it now but it involved quite a force to deal with rebellions not to mention Carthage were slow, however they've built a huge army and threaten me once more.

Another point artillery... give everyone artillery or none because its a bit too uber. I had a bridge battle and my men got slaughtered.

Last point, sacred band are the most uber-fied unit in the game 5 units of Ambactri?? heavy infantry surrounded one unit and they held it off.

[Caligula Caesar]

If it's Volubilis (Mauretania), then it is best to ignore it for a while. I find that settlement notibly rebellious, and you won't get too many enemies spurting forth from it.

[Lord Dakier]

Erm no I dont think it is. Its the fourth settlement across from the bottom righ.

[Eamonn]

Spent an hour writing two post and it wouldn't send it,why?

[Eamonn]

It sent that one.